本期Nature Communications在線介紹了用來模擬癌細(xì)胞與非癌細(xì)胞之間界面的一個(gè)新的、更精確的方法。這一方法也許能夠提升我們對(duì)腫瘤發(fā)展以及治療干預(yù)措施療效的認(rèn)識(shí)。

癌癥發(fā)展已被與基因表達(dá)的復(fù)雜變化聯(lián)系了起來，在其中細(xì)胞的精確物理位置似乎也起一定作用——靠近癌細(xì)胞與正常細(xì)胞之間界面的細(xì)胞會(huì)與那些相距較遠(yuǎn)的細(xì)胞具有不同的基因表達(dá)特征。

Biju Parekkadan及同事建立了一個(gè)新系統(tǒng)，它使其能夠?qū)┘?xì)胞和非癌細(xì)胞組織到截然不同的空間腔室中，然后采用基于顯微鏡的激光捕捉方法來將單個(gè)細(xì)胞解析出來，以進(jìn)行分子分析。

采用他們的新方法，本文作者得以能夠顯示一種名為“reversine”的抗癌藥物何以在那些物理上靠近癌細(xì)胞和正常細(xì)胞之間界面的細(xì)胞中有最強(qiáng)效應(yīng)，該發(fā)現(xiàn)隨后在用小鼠所做的試驗(yàn)中得到證實(shí)。這一模型有可能被用來揭示以相似方式發(fā)揮作用的其他藥物的療效以及對(duì)現(xiàn)有抗癌藥物的治療方案進(jìn)行優(yōu)化。

原文標(biāo)題：Resolving cancer–stroma interfacial signalling and interventions with micropatterned tumour–stromal assays

原文摘要：Tumour–stromal interactions are a determining factor in cancer progression. In vivo, the interaction interface is associated with spatially resolved distributions of cancer and stromal phenotypes. Here, we establish a micropatterned tumour–stromal assay (μTSA) with laser capture microdissection to control the location of co-cultured cells and analyse bulk and interfacial tumour–stromal signalling in driving cancer progression. μTSA reveals a spatial distribution of phenotypes in concordance with human ?oestrogen receptor-positive (?ER+) breast cancer samples, and heterogeneous drug activity relative to the tumour–stroma interface. Specifically, an unknown mechanism of ?reversine is shown in targeting tumour–stromal interfacial interactions using ?ER+ MCF-7 breast cancer and bone marrow-derived stromal cells. Reversine suppresses MCF-7 tumour growth and bone metastasis in vivo by reducing tumour stromalization including collagen deposition and recruitment of activated stromal cells. This study advocates μTSA as a platform for studying tumour microenvironmental interactions and cancer field effects with applications in drug discovery and development.

購買進(jìn)口儀器、試劑和耗材——就在始于2001年的畢特博生物 www.gducity.com