title: Engineered microenvironments provide new insights into ovarian and prostate cancer progression and drug responses.
abstract: Tissue engineering technologies, which have originally been designed to reconstitute damaged tissue structure and function, can mimic not only tissue regeneration processes but also cancer development and progression. Bioengineered approaches allow cell biologists to develop sophisticated experimentally and physiologically relevant cancer models to recapitulate the complexity of the disease seen in patients. Tissue engineering tools enable three-dimensionality based on the design of biomaterials and scaffolds that re-create the geometry, chemistry, function and signalling milieu of the native tumour microenvironment. Three-dimensional (3D) microenvironments, including cell-derived matrices, biomaterial-based cell culture models and integrated co-cultures with engineered stromal components, are powerful tools to study dynamic processes like proteolytic functions associated with cancer progression, metastasis and resistance to therapeutics. In this review, we discuss how biomimetic strategies can reproduce a humanised niche for human cancer cells, such as peritoneal or bone-like microenvironments, addressing specific aspects of ovarian and prostate cancer progression and therapy response.
authors: Cancer and Molecular Medicine Program, Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation, Queensland University of Technology, 60 Musk Avenue, Kelvin Grove, 4059 Brisbane, Australia. Electronic address: daniela.lossner@qut.edu.au.
authors: Daniela
authors: D
authors: Loessner
authors: Cancer and Molecular Medicine Program, Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation, Queensland University of Technology, 60 Musk Avenue, Kelvin Grove, 4059 Brisbane, Australia; Orthopaedic Center for Musculoskeletal Research, Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Julius-Maximilians-University Wuerzburg, Brettreichstr. 11, 97074 Wuerzburg, Germany. Electronic address: holzapfel@orthopaedic-oncology.net.
authors: Boris Michael
authors: BM
authors: Holzapfel
authors: Cancer and Molecular Medicine Program, Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation, Queensland University of Technology, 60 Musk Avenue, Kelvin Grove, 4059 Brisbane, Australia; Australian Prostate Cancer Research Centre - Queensland, Queensland University of Technology, Translational Research Institute, 37 Kent Street, Woolloongabba, 4102 Brisbane, Australia. Electronic address: j.clements@qut.edu.au.
authors: Judith Ann
authors: JA
authors: Clements
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D000970:Antineoplastic Agents / Q000494:pharmacology; D032701:Biomimetics; D018929:Cell Culture Techniques; D018450:Disease Progression; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008954:Models, Biological; D010051:Ovarian Neoplasms / Q000188:drug therapy / Q000473:pathology*; D011471:Prostatic Neoplasms / Q000188:drug therapy / Q000473:pathology*; D023822:Tissue Engineering / Q000379:methods*; D059016:Tumor Microenvironment / Q000502:physiology
chemical_list: D000970:Antineoplastic Agents
keywords: 3D culture models; Bone metastasis; Humanised; Intraperitoneal metastasis; Preclinical drug testing; Tissue engineering