Metabolic remodelling of the tumour microenvironment is a major mechanism by which cancer cells survive and resist treatment. The pro-oncogenic inflammatory cascade released by adipose tissue promotes oncogenic transformation, proliferation, angiogenesis, metastasis and evasion of apoptosis. STAT3 has emerged as an important mediator of metabolic remodelling. As a downstream effector of adipocytokines and cytokines, its canonical and non-canonical activities affect mitochondrial functioning and cancer metabolism. In this review, we examine the central role played by the crosstalk between the transcriptional and mitochondrial roles of STAT3 to promote survival and further oncogenesis within the tumour microenvironment with a particular focus on adipose-breast cancer interactions.

Access to desktop additive manufacturing is growing and the argument could be made for 3D printers to be standard laboratory equipment. The power of the printers lies in the democratisation of scientific equipment. Traditional agarose gel electrophoresis forms a cornerstone of molecular biology research, teaching and learning. Reliable electrophoresis is dependent on a number of factors which include standardized commercial equipment with respect to casting trays, combs, horizontal tanks and power supplies. The aforementioned systems come at a high initial cost; this is before factoring in the costs of standard electrophoresis grade agarose and associated reagent pricing. Here, we present a basic method for the additive manufacturing of a simple 3D printable agarose gel electrophoresis (AGE) unit with a built-in gel casting tray for standard size microscope slide-based AGE; named AG3D. The system presented was validated using different standard agarose-buffers (Tris Acetate EDTA and Tris Borate EDTA) and commercially available base-pair ladders. We provide a comparison between the AG3D and a commercial AGE system in respect to resolving power of the electrophoresis unit and discuss the overall reduction in cost afforded by the AG3D electrophoresis toolkit. The method presented has the potential for application in low resource educational environments by: significantly lowering costs through the reduction of reagents (agarose, buffers etc), allowing for the use of low sample volumes, and providing an open-source toolkit for modification whether for research or teaching & learning.