Development of different organ derived decellularized tissue gels that support in vitro tumor cell behavior in a tumor type-specific manner

抄録

Tumor biology can no longer be understood simply by focusing on the characteristics of the tumor cells, but instead must encompass the contributions of the “tumor microenvironment”. Although the tumor microenvironment contains multiple natural extracellular matrices (ECMs), only single or specific ECMs are presently used to assess the behavioral characteristics of tumor cells in vitro. Recently, the use of decellularized tissue gels (DTGs) has gained attention, as they represent a new platform to provide multiple ECM components of the cellular microenvironment. However, as tissues contain unique components of ECMs, it is essential to reproduce the tissue-specific landscape when evaluating tumor functions in vitro. We hypothesized that DTGs affect the in vitro tumor cell behavior and that their protein composition varies between tissues. To test this, we created lung and liver DTGs via freeze-thawing and investigated the effects of DTGs on tumor cell migration. DTGs regulated the migration of tumor cells when these were cultured on DTG-coated plates. The proteins present in the DTGs were separated via SDS-PAGE, and multiple bands were observed using silver staining. Noteworthy, the band pattern varied depending on the tissue from which the DTGs were derived. In summary, this study shows that certain DTGs modulate the behavioral characteristics of tumor cells, which may have potential applications in cancer studies and therapy development. Hence, DTGs are worth investigating as useful tools for tumor cell culture and in vitro assays.