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Metastasis, the dissemination of cells from the primary tumor to other sites within the body, is responsible for 90% of deaths linked to cancer. Chemotherapy is the standard of care for metastatic breast cancer, although many patients do not respond well or develop resistance to these drugs. The goal of our research is to understand the contribution of the components that surround and support tumors in these processes, in particular the extracellular matrix, to better predict which tumors will metastasize and become drug-resistant, as well as find new ways to treat them.
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Madeleine Oudin, PI
Photo by Samara Vise 
Image by Sammy Kata
Lab FUNDING
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NEWSOctober 2020
Paper out at Science Advances! See here for our newest study led by Andrew Wishart titled 'Decellularized extracellular matrix scaffolds identify full-length collagen VI as a driver of breast cancer cell invasion in obesity and metastasis'. Tufts Now also covered the paper. So proud of everyone's hard work on this!
Madeleine attends BMES 2020 represented the Tufts BME department and presenting the lab's work on decellularized ECM matrices to study invasion and metastasis. Sarah Blake joins the lab as a part of the Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation Program Justinne Guarin gives a talk at the NYAS Systemic Effects of Metastatic Cancer meeting on her work on the effect of chemotherapy on the liver ECM. She was also awarded a School of Engineering Travel Award to attend this meeting. Sydney Conner is appointed to the NIIDDK T32 Research Training Program in Nutrition,Obesity, and Metabolic Disorders for her work on studying adipocyte-driven ECM secretion. September 2020 The Oudin lab goes apple picking! 
August 2020
Madeleine is invited to present the lab's research in the Pre-Tenure Bioengineering Faculty e-Seminar Series. 
Welcome to new post-doctoral fellow Allison Sirois, who is starting in the lab as an NIH IRACDA Post-doctoral scholar! She will will look at the role of innervation in breast cancer.
Paper accepted!! Wishart et al., 2020, currently on Biorxiv, has been accepted for publication at Science Advances! Final version should be out soon! Congratulations to MSc student Priyanka for passing her ORP with flying colors! She will be working on targeting bio electricity to treat metastatic breast cancer. The lab welcomes a new post-doctoral fellow Charlotte Kelley, who recently completed her PhD with Prof. Erin Cram at Northeastern. Charlotte will look into ECM-driven mechanisms of metastasis. Welcome Charlotte! Madeleine has been invited to share recent work from the lab at the ASMB E-Symposium 'Matrix: the Master Puppeteer'. Jackson presents his work on 'Paclitaxel-induced Collagen IV drives TNBC cell migration in the post-chemotherapy tumor microenvironment' at the CSHL meeting on Models and Mechanisms of Cancer. July 2020 The lab says goodbye to Janani Baskaran, who after completing her BSc and MSc at Tufts BME is off to Yale for her PhD. We will miss her but wish her the best for her graduate studies! Madeleine gives talks to the incoming BEST freshman students who will be freshmen in the fall at Tufts, to the DIAMONDs Scholars Program, University College participants who are high schoolers from all over the world. Happy Bastille Day! Madeleine is French as well so we did the same for Bastille Day!! 
Happy Canada Day! Sam and Madeleine are both Canadian, so we decided to have a little celebration with a Kahoot quiz to test the knowledge of our lab members about Canada!
June 2020
Congratulations to 2nd year PhD student Justinne for passing her original research proposal! A few lab members got together to celebrate in person - socially distanced and wearing masks - and have ice cream! 
Congratulations to 2nd year PhD student Sydney for passing her original research proposal!
We welcome Priyanka Ram as a new MSc student in the lab.
The Oudin Lab has been approved from reopening! Even though we have been at home for almost 3 months, we have been keeping busy. See what we have been up to from 9-5 during COVID:https://youtu.be/aPIvObXEamw All lab members participate, but special thanks to Victory who put it all together! May 2020 Graduation Tufts 2020! We had a great weekend celebrate the class of 2020 with special shoutout to our Oudin Lab graduates: Joanna Peng, graduating with degree in Chemical Engineering, Claire Dunn, graduating with a degree in Biology, Janani Baskaran, graduating with a Msc in Biomedical Engineering, our senior design team Marguerite Salamone, Risa Williams and Blake McIntyre graduating from Biomedical Engineering. Zoom happy hour and games, online ceremony and gift delivery! Thank you for all your contributions to the Oudin Lab!! 
Our ECM prediction paper is out in APL Bioengineering! Check it out here. This is the first ECM paper from the lab! April 2020 Madeleine had a 'virtual visit' at Penn State College of Medicine and gave a virtual seminar for the Biomedical Science Seminar Series on the lab's work on the role of the ECM in metastasis and drugs resistance. Thanks to Katherine Aird for the invitation. Congratulations to Victory and Logan for passing their Original Research Proposal exams for their Masters Thesis with flying colors! Congratulations to Oudin Lab undergrads who are moving on graduate school: Janani Baskaran will be going to Yale BME, Joanna Peng will be going to BU BME and Anna Weldy will be going to UC Berkeley CHEME! Congratulations to sophomore Rachel McGinn who has been selected as a 2020 Laidlaw Scholar! This funding will support her for 2 summers to develop her research and leadership skills. Congratulations to Janani on a successful Masters thesis defense on her work entitled 'Predicting Breast Cancer Invasion in Response to Extracellular Matrix Cues'. We did our best to celebrate by Zoom and can't wait for an in person celebration. 
March 2020
The Oudin lab is officially shut down for the COVID-19 pandemic. Stay safe everyone! Will and Sydney presented their research at the Annual Graduate Student Research Symposium. Congrats to Will for his first prize in the 3-min talk! 
February 2020
Madeleine visited Tufts Medical School to share work from the Oudin Lab on the neural identity of tumors. Madeleine was named an Exemplary Engineering by the graduate students at Tufts BME for the second year in a row! Thanks to the students for their support!! 
Madeleine visited the Biomedical Engineering Department at UConn in Storrs, CT to share work from the Oudin Lab on the roles of the ECM in driving metastasis.
The lab goes downtown to see Jackson's annual talk for the CMDB PhD program and went for hotpot in Chinatown after. 
We welcome new Masters student Victory Unigwe to the lab! She will investigate the mechanisms by which chemotherapy treatment alters ECM composition in breast tumors.
The lab took Madeleine out for lunch in Harvard Square to celebrate her birthday! Thanks everyone! 
January 2020
Pre-print submitted! We are excited to share a pre-print from the lab entitled 'Obesity driven changes in ECM composition promote local invasion and metastasis of breast tumors' work led by 1st Oudin Lab member Andrew Wishart, with help from Yifan Peng, Justinne Guarin, Sydney Conner, Jackson Fatherree and collaboration with Andrew Greenberg's lab at the HNRCA. Madeleine visits the Randall Centre for Cell and Molecular Biophysics to share the lab's research. Thanks to Matthias Krause, fellow Gertler lab alum, for hosting! 
Happy New Year and happy 2nd birthday to us!
We started the New Year with a lot of exciting news. Grant Awarded! The Oudin Lab has been awarded an Early Career Investigator Award from the METAvivor Metastatic Breast Cancer Foundation. We are grateful for their support. Pre-print submitted! We are excited to share a pre-print from the lab entitled 'Cell shape, and not 2D migration, predicts ECM-driven 3D cell invasion in breast cancer', worked led by MSc student Janani Baskaran and NSF REU summer student Anna Weldy, to which many lab members contributed. Madeleine presented work from the lab at the CMBE-BMES Annual meeting in Puerto Rico, where she received a Rising Star Award. 
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