Blood Vessels: the Tumor´s Silent Climb

The story

Since beginning my PhD, I’ve carried out countless immunohistochemical experiments. Many weekends have been spent washing and mounting brain sections onto thin glass slides, and countless hours passed in a dark room at the microscope—even on those rare sunny days. Disclaimer: most of these experiments haven’t worked out. Sometimes it’s a faulty antibody, other times the confocal microscope acts up, but more often than not, it’s because the hypothesis itself doesn’t hold. 

For this image, I was testing whether blood vessels with more collagen are also the ones surrounded by more migrating tumor cell—which doesn’t seem to be the case. Yet, there’s a kind of beauty in this image: the shade of colors, the intricate lines of the capillaries reflecting what is happening in the brain for real, make all those hours worthwhile.

Research area

Neurological disorders, neurovascular disease mechanisms, pericytes.

Impact

By unraveling the mechanisms behind tumor cells migration, we may be able to limit the tumor’s spread and improve treatment outcomes.

Image description

In the image, brain tumor cells (blue) are found in the space surrounding a blood vessel, composed by collagen (green). The pericytes (red), cells wrapping the blood vessels, increase the collagen production in tumor and may facilitate the tumor invasion.

Credits

Carolina Buizza