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The Link Between Fibroblast and the Tumor Growth

Semester: Summer 2025


Presentation description

My project aims to understand why tumor comes back or spread out in some patients but not others. Here, we are looking at the fibroblast because normally fibroblast acts to build and support the tissue but can be turned to help tumor growth, spread, and survive. In order to study human tumors, the lab collected samples from patients. Those samples were implanted into the special mice without a strong immune system and something interesting were found: tumor that grow well in these mice usually come from patient whose tumor is likely to come back or spread. This suggests that those tumors might be more aggressive. My project is to see if fibroblast play a role in this tumor aggressiveness. To do this, we used organoids, which are mini-version of tumor grown from the same patient. Organoids from both patients whose tumor came back and those did not were implanted into the mammary fat pads of mice, and we collected tumor samples at different time to see how they grow overtime. The marker α-sma (alpha-smooth muscle actin) was used to detect fibroblast and the methods used are immunohistochemistry to look at the morphology and the staining pattern of the fibroblast. In our results, we determined that in one type of mouse (NOD/SCID), there were more fibroblasts surrounding the more aggressive tumors. However, another type of mice (NSG) did not show a big difference. This suggested that fibroblasts may help some tumors to grow, but there are likely other factors that are influencing tumor aggressiveness.

Presenter Name: Ava Brown
Presentation Type: Poster
Presentation Format: In Person
Presentation #C37
College: Medicine
School / Department: Oncological Sciences
Research Mentor: Alana Welm
Time: 11:00 AM
Physical Location or Zoom link:

Henriksen