Please note that this event is postponed due to COVID-19 concerns. Please check our CyI Events page for updates as the situation changes.

Abstract

Physical forces have a crucial role in tumor progression and cancer treatment. The application of principles of engineering and physical sciences to oncology has provided powerful insights into the mechanisms by which these forces affect tumor progression and confer resistance to delivery and efficacy of molecular, nano-, cellular, and immuno-medicines.

In his talk, Dr Stylianopoulos will discuss the mechanics of the solid and fluid components of a tumor, with a focus on how they impede the transport of therapeutic agents and create an abnormal tumor microenvironment (TME) that fuels tumor progression and treatment resistance. He will also present strategies developed to reengineer the TME by normalizing the tumor vasculature and the extracellular matrix (ECM) to improve cancer treatment. These strategies have been successfully tested in preclinical tumor models and have enter clinical trials.
Finally, I will present a mathematical modelling framework that has provided insights into the physical barriers to cancer treatment and revealed new strategies to overcome these barriers.

About the Speaker

Triantafyllos received a Diploma in Chemical Engineering from National Technical University of Athens, Greece (GPA: 9.34/10) in 2003. The same year he joined the Chemical Engineering graduate program at the University of Minnesota, USA to pursue his doctoral studies. He worked with Professor Victor Barocas on modeling the mechanical response of native and bioartificial tissues. During his doctoral studies, he was elected twice top doctoral student of the department. After the completion of his Ph.D., in May 2008, Triantafyllos joined Dr. Rakesh Jain's lab in the department of Radiation Oncology at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, USA for his prostodoctoral training. In Dr. Jain's lab he performed research in a mixture of experimental and computational problems for optimizing the delivery of molecular and nanoscale medicine to solid tumors. In September 2010, he joined the faculty of the Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering department at the University of Cyprus.

Triantafyllos has co-authored over 98 publications in peer-review journals. His publication record includes five articles in Nature journals (Nature Nanotechnology, Nature Medicine, Nature Communications and two articles in Nature Reviews Clinical Oncology), eight articles in PNAS, two in Cancer Research as well as articles in Clinical Cancer Research and ACS Nano. h-index:31, > 6440 citations (Web-of-Science) | h-index:36, > 8500 citations (GoogleScholar).

He has received a highly selective research grant by the European Research Council (ERC StG) in 2013 as well as the prestigious Y. C. Fung Early Career award by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers in 2016. Triantafyllos was also the recipient of the 2014 Most Cited Paper Award by the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES) of the USA in 2014 and the New Researcher Award by the Research Promotion Foundation of Cyprus the same year.  

The last 6 years, Triantafyllos has received as a Prinicipal Investigator ~ 3.5 Million in Research funding, including 7 grants from the FP7 and Horizon2020 frameworks and 2 grants from the Research Promotion Foundation of Cyprus.

Triantafyllos is a member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, the Biomedical Engineering Society of the USA, the European Foundation of Clinical Nanomedicine, the European Society of Biomechanics and the Greek Association of Computational Mechanics.

Contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

View all CyI events.