Ruoslahti Research Laboratory at UC Santa Barbara
The underlying themes of Dr. Ruoslahti's work are tumor vasculature and metastasis. Tumors, like other tissues, contain both blood vessels and lymphatic vessels. A tumor needs blood vessels to be able to grow, and destroying tumor blood vessels is the basis of a promising new cancer therapy. Lymphatic vessels are not needed for tumor growth, but like blood vessels, the lymphatics are an important conduit of distant metastasis.
Left to right: Barry Rowan, Tambet Teesalu, Venkata Ramana Kotamraju, Kunal Gujraty, Priya Karmail, Kazuki Sugahara, Heli Matilainen, Hector Biliran, David Peters, Erkki Ruoslahti, Paul Kirsch, Xuiquan Luo, Michael Kwong