According to a recent study of University of Illinois in the United States, among malignant tumors, only a few tumor cells can escape and spread to other parts of the body. However, curves along the edge of the tumor may play an important role in the activation of these cells.
Use in a variety of shapes and patterns designed organizational environment, the skin cancer study found that the more curved cell cultures, at the edge of the display there are more cancer stem cell marker characteristics - it is spreading to other key organizations. This is for us to learn more about cancer and the development of personalized treatment programs has a profound effect.
The study, by a professor of materials science and engineering and professor of veterinary Kristopher Kilian Timothy Fan complete guide, published in the latest issue of the journal Nature Materials.
Kilian said, "Cancer metastasis is the most dangerous place. Some we call cancer stem cells, can be deadly performance, they can be reached through the bloodstream to other tissues and form new tumors. Now we need some way to these cells are found and understand them, and it is important, given the development of new drugs to target them because these cancer stem cells to targeted primary tumor chemotherapy drugs produce drug resistance, which can lead to cancer recurrence."
Kilian's team specializes in tissue engineering to create tumor models to more accurately study the cancer process in a petri dish in. In the new study, the researchers cultured in a variety of different shapes and patterns 2 d and 3 d environment mouse skin cancer cell colonies, to explore whether the shape of the tumor helps activate the cancer stem cells, cancer stem cells and to explore which appeared in the tumor site.
They found that most of the cancer stem cells appear to be designed at the edge of the tumor environment, particularly in the angular and convex curve place. Kilian said, "It is very strange to normal stem cells prefer soft, slimy internal position so cancers, everyone agrees that cancer stem cells in the middle of the tumor, we found that the geometric constraints - like tumors. Healthy tissue in contact with the site, it seems to activate these cancer stem cells at the edges."
Researchers in their engineering environment have done a lot of testing to confirm the ability of tumor spread, such as genetic analysis. They also tested other cancer cell lines - human cervical cancer, lung cancer and prostate cancer, and found them in the same way there is a pattern of the tumor environment responded.
Then, Kilian's team in collaboration with Fan's team tested skin cancer stem cells in live mice, they found that, compared with the traditional dish, from the culture environment have a pattern of cells, are more likely to cause cancer.
Kilian said, "We found that when the cells are designed to have characteristics of these stem cells, when transplanted into mice, the mice developed more tumors, their incidence of lung tumor metastases is much higher. The same in a tumor, this area developed into shape, you may activate the cells, then the cells to escape and form more tumors. This may help the surgeon to view the growth of the tumor periphery, and use them to guide the shape of the tumor, may be more uncertain for the site to assess, which means that they may need to remove more tissue surrounding the tumor, they may not need to take so many organizations."
Kilian hope, bring a patterned tissue engineering environment, will give researchers a new way to find cancer stem cells and cultured in conventional medium which has been very elusive - less than 1% of the cells be found. In addition to basic scientific discovery and understanding of these tumor cells, he also believes that the engineering design of the tumor environment in personalized medicine will have great therapeutic applications.
He said, "You can imagine, each patient has a particular cancer. You can design it in a dish, using the patient's own cells, you can develop a specific tumor models to test drugs. If you can take out the patient's cells and within a few days to get used to screen all available drugs micro tumors, the oncologist can give patients to develop individualized treatment programs, targeted at present we do not see the tumor cells and these elusive cancer stem cells."
Kilian said, "Although there is much work to be done, but we are very excited that that tumor growth in very simple material properties may be a culprit in the spread of the disease. We believe that it opens up for the development of the study drug a new way, and be able to guide the surgery, as well as understand the development and spread of cancer. Cancer is very complex, so put it in the background is the key. If a micro-environment provides the background which activates the spread of cancer cells, then it is quite important to understand this background."
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