Built Environment

Although it looks cute and cuddly, this fluff-ball is deadly. It’s a pancreatic cancer cell, grown in the lab on a network of tiny fibres designed to recreate the three-dimensional environment within a tumour. For many years researchers have grown cancer cells in flat layers in plastic Petri dishes as a way of searching for potential tumour-killing therapies. But drugs that work well in the lab haven’t always translated into successful treatments in patients, particularly for pancreatic cancer. By growing cancer cells in more realistic 3D environments, scientists hope to understand more about how tumours grow and find new therapies that are more likely to work in real life situations. Pancreatic cancer is extremely hard to treat – less than one per cent of patients survive for ten years and UK survival rates haven’t changed in the past 40 years – so more effective approaches for tackling the disease are urgently needed.

Written by Kat Arney

Kat Arney

Writer

Dr Kat Arney is an award-winning science writer, broadcaster and public speaker, and is the founder and Creative Director of First Create The Media.

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• Image by Kseniya Shuturminska
• This image is a finalist in the International Images for Science 2017 exhibition, organised by the Royal Photographic Society and supported by Siemens as part of the Curiosity Project
• Image copyright held by the photographer