Sophie Mancha

Current Research

Optical metabolic imaging of micro-fabricated image-based models for predicting drug response in pancreatic cancer patients

My goal is to construct biomimetic in vitro pancreatic cancer models that replicate native tissue stiffness and architecture with bio-relevant extracellular components. This has the potential to improve engineered culture models to better understand cancer progression mechanisms for the future development of novel treatments. Currently, I have established an efficient fabrication technique and analyzed pancreas cell migration behavior on the imaged-based fabricated models. Next, I will examine the metabolic activity of those pancreas cells on the models via two-photon microscopy to better understand native collagen architecture effects on cancer metastasis.