New algae gel provides realistic platform for breast cancer research
 

In 2020, right when Jane Baude was starting her Ph.D. research at UC Santa Barbara, she learned that a critical component of her experiment - the gel needed to grow and test mammary epithelial cells - wouldn't be available for nearly a year because of pandemic-related production issues. So, she and her adviser, professor Ryan Stowers, decided to pivot: Baude would engineer her own gel to study cells.

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