Barton Shares Expertise On Fighting Cancer With Engineering

A $10.8 million allocation from the state's New Economy Initiative is supporting University of Arizona researchers who are 3D printing tissue models to better study how cancer forms and is treated. In an interview with Arizona Public Media's Arizona Science podcast, BME professor and BIO5 Institute Director Jennifer Barton explained that cancer has already been eradicated in tests involving petri dishes and mice. However, the jump to humans in "stubbornly different." 

"The cancer engineering initiative is a great way to bring together the technology and the insights that engineers bring to a really tough problem in medicine that we've been trying to solve for decades," Barton said. 

Barton has an extensive history studying cancer, including the development and patent of a "falloposcope" instrument, which images fallopian tubes and searches signs of early-stage ovarian cancer.