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Development of a novel "all-human" animal model to study breast cancer metastasis to bone - comparison of transcriptional signatures from ex vivo cultured primary tumor cells and in vivo metastatic populations.

Subject Area Orthopaedics, Traumatology, Reconstructive Surgery
General and Visceral Surgery
Term from 2012 to 2015
Project identifier Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 222945220
 
Final Report Year 2015

Final Report Abstract

New therapeutic strategies against bone metastasis are still missing. Studies have even shown that more than 80 % of novel drug candidates fail when tested in the clinic. This is primarily due to the lack of appropriate preclinical models that make it possible to recapitulate the key steps of the human disease as most animal models don’t account for the obvious cellular and molecular differences between rodents and humans. Therefore the DFG fellow has entered new avenues by developing tissue engineered constructs composed of biomimetic scaffolds and human mesenchymal progenitor cells and their matrix products to mimic functionally and morphologically defined humanized organoids within immuno-compromized murine hosts. Human breast and prostate cancer cells injected into the vascular system of the mice homed to the humanized constructs and developed bone metastases. Human haematopoietic stem cells were also shown to home to the humanized ossicles and develop a humanized immune system. The model presented could potentially satisfy the need for a preclinical platform in which both human cancer cells and human immune cells can be manipulated within a humanized microenvironment.

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