AsianScientist (Oct. 2, 2018) – Scientists in Japan have developed a cell culture platform that allows cancer cells to self-organize into microtumors, effectively mimicking cancer development in the body. Their findings are published in Scientific Reports.
Current methods to study cancer cells in vitro rely on culture systems that do not replicate the process of tumor formation in the body. Hence, researchers find it difficult to accurately observe the behaviors of cancer cells, impeding pre-clinical drug discovery and testing.
In the present study, researchers led by Assistant Professor Yukiko Miyatake and Associate Professor Kaori Kuribayashi-Shigetomi at Hokkaido University, Japan, created a new cell culture substrate from a coated glass slide with etched islands 30 μm in diameter. This is just enough space for one or two healthy cells to attach.
But when the researchers seeded the etched glass slides with pancreatic cancer cells and incubated them overnight, the cells self-organized into microtumors that could move in a concerted way. Precursors to the microtumors were formed by four or more cells undergoing entosis—the internalization of one cell by another. They also found that the internalized cells remained alive, and that the process of internalization was reversible.
When the researchers treated the microtumors with the widely used anti-cancer agent nocodazole, the microtumor disintegrated, but the resultant detached cells survived. Moreover, the researchers observed the microtumors ‘fishing’ for surrounding dead cells and ingesting them, in the process releasing chemical markers typical for dead cells. These markers ended up on the cancer cells’ surfaces, presumably masking them and enabling them to evade the immune system’s killer cells.
“I hope this easy and low-cost technique will find widespread adoption. If the discoveries made during these initial observations are physiologically or pathologically relevant phenomena, many more new hints may be gleaned for the development of more effective cancer treatment approaches,” said Miyatake.
The article can be found at: Miyatake et al. (2018) Visualizing the Dynamics of Live Pancreatic Microtumors Self-organized Through Cell-in-cell Invasion.
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Source: Hokkaido University.
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