JinSeok Park, PhD

I have investigated cancer development from the perspective of cancer cell biology and mechanobiology. Cancer cells actively modify tumor microenvironment (TME) for tumor progression. Extracellular matrix (ECM), a major component of TME supporting embedded cells physically in the tissue, undergoes re-organization by cancer cells. The reorganized ECM reciprocally regulates cancer-related phenotypes such as invasive migration facilitating tumor progression. This suggests that the elucidation of cancer cell-ECM interaction can provide important cues to understanding cancer promoting mechanism and thus improving cancer treatment. My lab aims to address how cancer cell-ECM interaction stimulates cancer-promoting phenotypes such as invasive cell migration and heterogeneous cell-cell interaction synergically with oncogenic alteration through the prism of mechanobiology and systems biology.