Modeling Metastatic Colonization in a Decellularized Organ Scaffold-Based Perfusion Bioreactor

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articleResearchpeer-review

Documents

  • Fulltext

    Final published version, 4.99 MB, PDF document

Metastatic cancer spread is responsible for most cancer-related deaths. To colonize a new organ, invading cells adapt to, and remodel, the local extracellular matrix (ECM), a network of proteins and proteoglycans underpinning all tissues, and a critical regulator of homeostasis and disease. However, there is a major lack in tools to study cancer cell behavior within native 3D ECM. Here, an in-house designed bioreactor, where mouse organ ECM scaffolds are perfused and populated with cells that are challenged to colonize it, is presented. Using a specialized bioreactor chamber, it is possible to monitor cell behavior microscopically (e.g., proliferation, migration) within the organ scaffold. Cancer cells in this system recapitulate cell signaling observed in vivo and remodel complex native ECM. Moreover, the bioreactors are compatible with co-culturing cell types of different genetic origin comprising the normal and tumor microenvironment. This degree of experimental flexibility in an organ-specific and 3D context, opens new possibilities to study cell–cell and cell–ECM interplay and to model diseases in a controllable organ-specific system ex vivo.

Original languageEnglish
Article number2100684
JournalAdvanced Healthcare Materials
Volume11
Issue number1
ISSN2192-2640
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2022

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 The Authors. Advanced Healthcare Materials published by Wiley-VCH GmbH

    Research areas

  • cancer metastasis, experimental methods, extracellular matrix, specialized bioreactors

Number of downloads are based on statistics from Google Scholar and www.ku.dk


No data available

ID: 285312199