The principles of engineering and physics have been applied to oncology for nearly 50 years. Engineers and physical scientists have made contributions to all aspects of cancer biology, from quantitative understanding of tumour growth and progression to improved detection and treatment of cancer. Many early efforts focused on experimental and computational modelling of drug distribution, cell cycle kinetics and tumour growth dynamics. In the past decade, we have witnessed exponential growth at the interface of engineering, physics and oncology that has been fuelled by advances in fields including materials science, microfabrication, nanomedicine, microfluidics, imaging, and catalysed by new programmes at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), including the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB), Physical Sciences in Oncology, and the National Cancer Institute (NCI) Alliance for Nanotechnology. Here, we review the advances made at the interface of engineering and physical sciences and oncology in four important areas: the physical microenvironment of the tumour and technological advances in drug delivery; cellular and molecular imaging; and microfluidics and microfabrication. We discussthe research advances, opportunities and challenges for integrating engineering and physical sciences with oncology to develop new methods to study, detect and treat cancer, and we also describe the future outlook for these emerging areas.

工程和物理学原理应用于肿瘤学已有近 50 年的历史。工程师和物理科学家为癌症生物学的各个方面做出了贡献，从对肿瘤生长和进展的定量理解到改进癌症的检测和治疗。许多早期的工作集中在药物分布、细胞周期动力学和肿瘤生长动力学的实验和计算模型上。在过去的十年中，我们目睹了工程、物理学和肿瘤学交叉领域的指数级增长，这些增长受到材料科学、微加工、纳米医学、微流体、成像等领域进步的推动，并受到美国国立卫生研究院新项目的催化(NIH)，包括国家生物医学成像和生物工程研究所 (NIBIB)、肿瘤物理科学和国家癌症研究所 (NCI) 纳米技术联盟。在这里，我们回顾了工程、物理科学和肿瘤学在四个重要领域的交叉领域取得的进展：肿瘤的物理微环境和药物输送的技术进步；细胞和分子成像；以及微流体和微加工。我们讨论了将工程和物理科学与肿瘤学相结合以开发研究、检测和治疗癌症的新方法的研究进展、机遇和挑战，并描述了这些新兴领域的未来前景。