A time machine for cancer
Pancreatic cancer has one of the worst survival rates among oncological diseases. Patients can live at least five years after diagnosis in only 9% of cases. Returning to the time of the beginning of tumor growth will allow us to see the interaction of the first atypical cells and will help researchers better understand how cancer begins and identify it as early as possible.
The pancreatic cancer "time machine" developed by Purdue University researchers has shown that the disease is even more unpredictable than previously thought: nearby cancer cells in the pancreas increase each other's aggressiveness towards healthy tissues.
The study, published in the journal Small, is the beginning of a long work on studying the development of pancreatic cancer. Since the publication of the paper, researchers have also discovered drug resistance in cancer cells originating from two drug-sensitive cell lines.
Invasive cancer sprouts from an artificial pancreatic duct. The cells are colored purple, the nuclei are colored blue. Source hereafter: Purdue University.
The so-called time machine is a hollow collagen tube that mimics the microanatomy of the pancreatic duct. By injecting cancer cell lines into microfluidic channels inside this artificial duct, researchers can use the system as a model to observe how pancreatic cancer behaves from day one.
As a rule, it takes 10-20 years for a patient to develop pancreatic cancer. Even in animal models, this process takes several months. The collagen model of the pancreatic tumor reduces the time of cancer development to two weeks and provides an opportunity to observe what happens over a long period of time. It helps to see trends that clinicians and researchers don't usually see.
A model of the pancreatic duct with implanted cancer cells. Non-invasive cell lines turn into invasive ones that can metastasize pancreatic cancer.
The tumor model speeds up time because researchers can download cell lines from an animal model or patient without waiting for an oncogenic mutation to occur. The very structure of the tumor model allows researchers to reconstruct the mutation as it occurs in the body.
To return to the past, the researchers simply rewind the material captured by the imaging equipment from the side of the artificial duct.
For their study, the group developed a pancreatic cell line on a mouse model, and then loaded it into the microfluidic channels of the artificial pancreatic duct. Once inside, the cell lines fill the duct and begin to grow.
A realistic model of a tumor is made by its shape. The fact is that the curvature of the pancreatic duct affects the behavior of cells. Cancer cells could be cultured in Petri dishes, but in a flat dish, the cells behave completely differently than in a duct.
The researchers saw that after two different types of cancer cells sprouted in the pancreatic tumor model, they became more invasive and sprouted from the duct, forming tumors.
Since cancer is a group of diseases, and pancreatic cancer includes four main mutations, the group plans to continue studying how each of these mutations interacts with each other. The tumor model can also be used as a tool for preliminary screening and detection of new targets when creating drugs.
Researchers have received a patent for a model of a pancreatic tumor.
Article by M.J.Brandney et al. A Biomimetic Tumor Model of Heterogenic Invasion in Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma is published in the journal Small.
Aminat Adzhieva, portal "Eternal Youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru based on Purdue University: Pancreatic cancer 'time machine' exposes plot twist in cell growth and invasion.