3D microfluidic platform to study cell invasion
2016
Arizona State University, Tempe, USA
Breast cancer is one of the most prevalent cancers in women. Invasion of surrounding tissues is one of the most critical steps to avoid the spread of the disease. However, the mechanisms underlying this process and the role of chemoattractants and other related tumour microenvironment components is widely overlooked in classic in vitro models. Here, a microfluidic chip composed of two matrix compartments with distinct characteristics is developed to model 3D chemotactic tumour stroma invasion with human breast cancer cells and human cancer-associated fibroblasts. The results showed that an epidermal growth factor transient gradient induced cancer cell invasion, increasing migration speed and persistence. Furthermore, this new setup allowed analysing several features at tissue and cellular level associated with the enhancement of cell invasive behaviour. Overall, the researchers propose a novel platform that recapitulates 3D tumour-stroma interactions and opens the door to better understand the tissue and cellular mechanisms that drive cell invasion in real-time.
Breast cancer cell invasion into a three dimensional tumor-stroma microenvironment
Mehdi Nikkhah
Added on: 10-13-2021
[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/srep34094[2] https://data.jrc.ec.europa.eu/dataset/ffebe454-ed9a-47cf-8a33-8cf70c1b7d38
