Bioengineered tumoral microtissues recapitulate desmoplastic reaction of pancreatic cancer

Abstract

Tumor microenvironment is extremely complex and its organization is due to the interaction between different kind of cells and the extracellular matrix. Tissue engineering could give the answer to the increasing need of 3D culture model that better recapitulate the tumor features at cellular and extracellular level. We aimed in this work at developing a microtissue tumor model by mean of seeding together cancer cells and fibroblasts on gelatin microsphere in order to monitor the crosstalk between the two cell populations and the endogenous extracellular matrix deposition. Results are of particular interest because of the need of heterotypic cancer model that can replicate the complexity of the tumor microenvironment and could be used as drug screening platform.

Halfway between 2D and Animal Models: Are 3D Cultures the Ideal Tool to Study Cancer-Microenvironment Interactions?

“…Their method was advantageous due to the ability to form large-sized spheroids within 24 h, control the tumor cell composition and density, and mimic the TME. Recently, Brancato et al confirmed the 3D model consistency with an in vivo setting, using biodegradable microcarriers (made of gelatin) in a spinner flask bioreactor [ 80 ]. In their system, pancreatic cancer cells were co-cultured with cancer-associated fibroblast, resulting in the formation of human pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma microtissues.…”

Intestine‐on‐chip device increases ECM remodeling inducing faster epithelial cell differentiation

“…Other researchers reported the anti-fibrotic properties of EGCG in endometriosis (Matsuzaki & Darcha, 2014). Here, we analyzed the ECM remodeling, in particular, the collagen deposition of the auto-produced lamina propria before and after EGCG treatment by combining MPM with SHG imaging (Brancato et al, 2017;Imparato et al, 2017) and PSR staining. CAD analysis demonstrated the changes of collagen microstructure with a slight decrease of the total collagen found in the EGCG-treated samples (14.2 ± 0.08 a.u.)…”

A 3D bioinspired highly porous polymeric scaffolding system forin vitrosimulation of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma

“…[23][24][25][26][27][28][29] Advances in tissue engineering enable the development of 3D constructs that are generally less expensive than animals, more reproducible and easy to develop while they provide a more realistic structure, cell-cell, cell-ECM spatial interactions and a more realistic distribution of environmental parameters within the system, such as nutrients and oxygen, chemotherapeutic diffusion, and irradiation deposition as compared to 2D systems. 8,[30][31][32][33][34][35][36] Current 3D in vitro systems of pancreatic tumours include (i) spheroid/organoid systems, [37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45] (ii) hydrogel scaffolds 42,[46][47][48] and (iii) polymeric scaffolds. [49][50][51] For example, Ware et al have developed pancreatic cancer spheroids with a distinct cohesiveness of the cellular masses.…”