Metastasis Observed Better in 3-D Models
July 14, 2006 by Gloria Gamat
Filed under Diseases & Conditions
In a process known as metastasis, a cancer cell separates from a primary tumor then settles in a new location where it will again divide. Typically, pharmaceutical companies use simple two-dimensional assays for the process of metastasis in order to evaluate anti-cancer therapeutics.
However, in these two-dimensional assays, cells crawl across the matrix surface, traveling only in a single plane, most probably missing some crucial phenomena.
In a research conducted at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, a research team (Whitehead Member Paul Matsudaira, MIT professor Douglas Lauffenburger and postdoctoral researcher Muhammad Zaman) discovered that cells move quite differently in three dimensions.
“Our findings help explain why two-dimensional assays for metastasis-inhibiting drugs do not effectively predict their effects in tissue,” says Douglas Lauffenburger, who is director of MIT’s Biological Engineering Division. “Two-dimensional assays ignore the obstacles that cells face in their natural contexts,” explains Zaman, who recently became an assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin.
“In 3D, cells move through a thick jungle of fibers, or ‘vines’, that hinder forward progress.” Cells must either squeeze through or chop up these putative vines to get anywhere. As a result, they move slower in three dimensions.
The research team recommends that pharmaceutical companies use three-dimensional assays, accompanied by appropriate computational models to determine how drugs affect metastasis. This study which focused on human prostate tumor cells appeared this week in the online early edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Read more at Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research.
