Congratulations to Ph.D. candidate Arinola Lampejo on winning the UF Health Cancer Center 2023 Research Day Poster Award in the Graduate & Predoctoral Student Category for her poster titled, “Incorporation of Tumor Spheroids into an ex-vivo Tissue Culture Model to Investigate Cancer Cell-Microvascular Interactions.”

A challenge in cancer research is the lack of biomimetic models that incorporate cancer cells, blood vessels, lymphatic vessels, and immune cells. To address this gap, Lampejo and others in the Murfee lab have introduced the rat mesentery culture model, which provides a complex and physiologically relevant culture system that enables the real-time tracking of multiple cell types during angiogenesis and lymphangiogenesis. This study aimed to demonstrate the feasibility of culturing transplanted tumor spheroids on rat mesenteric tissues to investigate cancer cell-microvascular interactions.