ArticleDrugging the extracellular matrix
Professor Melinda J DuerProfessor Melinda J Duer explains why the extracellular matrix represents a new frontier in cancer drug discovery: how cells build the matrix and take their instructions from it, and how that relationship changes in cancer.
Drug Discovery World · Fall 2026 · pp. 40–43 · 2026Read the paper ↗Journal articlePreserving integrity: innovative in vitro methods for extracellular matrix decellularization and collagen purification
Bashtanova U, Li R, Goldberga I, Bansode S, Gerl K, Burgess KP, Wegner-Repke AJ, Duer MJMethods for stripping cells from tissue and purifying collagen while leaving the matrix's own structure intact — the groundwork for studying the matrix as a material.
Journal of Biological Engineering · doi 10.1186/s13036-025-00617-6 · 2026Read the paper ↗Journal articleMolecular flexibility of hyaluronic acid has a profound effect on invasion of cancer cells
Uliana Bashtanova, Agne Kuraite, Rakesh Rajan and Melinda DuerHow the brain's hyaluronic acid is held decides whether glioblastoma cells invade or stay dormant. Diluted, its molecules become flexible enough to bind the CD44 receptor strongly and invasion switches on; held densely, they cannot, and the cells stay dormant. A crosslinkable form, oxHA, arrested invasion in the same way.
Royal Society Open Science · doi 10.1098/rsos.251036 · 2025Read the paper ↗Journal articleMolecular flexibility of high molecular weight hyaluronic acid measured by NMR has a profound effect on invasion of cancer cells
Bashtanova U, Kuraite A, Rajan R, Duer MJThe preprint of the hyaluronic acid work: how the molecular flexibility of HA, rather than how much of it is present, governs whether cancer cells invade.
bioRxiv · doi 10.1101/2024.12.17.626583 · 2024Read the paper ↗Journal articleMolecular conformations and dynamics in the extracellular matrix of mammalian structural tissues: Solid-state NMR spectroscopy approaches
Murgoci A, Duer MHow solid-state NMR reads the shape and movement of matrix molecules in structural tissue — the technique underpinning the company's science.
Matrix Biology Plus · doi 10.1016/j.mbplus.2021.100086 · 2021Read the paper ↗Journal articleDetection of nucleic acids and other low abundance components in native bone and osteosarcoma extracellular matrix by isotope enrichment and DNP-enhanced NMR
Goldberga I, Li R, Chow WY, Reid DG, Bashtanova U, Rajan R, Puszkarska A, Oschkinat H, Duer MJFinding the scarce components of bone and osteosarcoma matrix by enriching them and boosting the NMR signal — relevant to the platform's third indication.
RSC Advances · doi 10.1039/c9ra03198g · 2019Read the paper ↗