To clump together and form living tissue, cells secrete molecules that create structure. But that structure isn’t always healthy, and understanding how it goes bad could reveal more about the way cancer develops.

Those molecules, known as the extracellular matrix, do more than simply hold everything together. The extracellular matrix guides cell behavior, ordering changes that in turn cause cells to secrete different molecules and changing the qualities of the matrix. So, when tissue turns cancerous, the extracellular matrix is part of that overhaul, too. But what exactly changes—and the importance of those changes—isn’t yet clear.

Now, a team of University of Wisconsin–Madison biomedical engineers hopes to identify the specific extracellular matrix alterations that drive ovarian cancer progression while developing approaches to create representative laboratory models to study other forms of cancer.

The team has received a 5-year, $2.2 million grant from the National Institutes of Health through the National Cancer Institute’s Cancer Tissue Engineering Collaborative Research Program.

Associate Professor Pam Kreeger, Vilas Distinguished Professor Kristyn Masters, and Professor Paul Campagnola will analyze and then model a type of cancer called high-grade serous ovarian cancer at different stages—from onset in the fallopian tube to metastasis in the ovary and spread in the abdomen. They hope to provide the deepest look at the extracellular matrix in ovarian cancer to date.

“Not only will we learn something about the different stages of ovarian cancer,” says Kreeger, “but, more broadly, we will contribute to the goal of this NIH program by developing technologies that can then be used to study the matrix in other cancers.”