The Christine Iacobuzio-Donahue Lab

Our lab investigates the fundamental evolutionary mechanisms underlying metastasis using pancreatic cancer as our model tumor type. Metastasis is the result of a series of biological hurdles subject to Darwinian selection including the birth of metastasis-enabled cells within a heterogeneous primary tumor microenvironment, intravasation of these cells into a functional vascular bed, survival in the circulation, extravasation from the vasculature, and establishment of an autonomous cell population within the newly encountered foreign microenvironment.