Rao Wei, Zhao Shuting, Yu Jianhua, Lu Xiongbin, Zynger Debra L, He Xiaoming
Department of Biomedical Engineering, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210, USA.
Davis Heart and Lung Research Institute, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210, USA.
Biomaterials. 2014 Sep;35(27):7762-7773. doi: 10.1016/j.biomaterials.2014.06.011. Epub 2014 Jun 19.
Cancer stem-like cells (CSCs) are rare subpopulations of cancer cells that are reported to be responsible for cancer resistance and metastasis associated with conventional cancer therapies. Therefore, effective enrichment/culture of CSCs is of importance to both the understanding and treatment of cancer. However, it usually takes approximately 10 days for the widely used conventional approach to enrich CSCs through the formation of CSC-containing aggregates. Here we report the time can be shortened to 2 days while obtaining prostate CSC-containing aggregates with better quality based on the expression of surface receptor markers, dye exclusion, gene and protein expression, and in vivo tumorigenicity. This is achieved by encapsulating and culturing human prostate cancer cells in the miniaturized 3D liquid core of microcapsules with an alginate hydrogel shell. The miniaturized 3D culture in core-shell microcapsules is an effective strategy for enriching/culturing CSCs in vitro to facilitate cancer research and therapy development.
癌症干细胞（CSCs）是癌细胞中的稀有亚群，据报道它们与传统癌症治疗相关的癌症耐药性和转移有关。因此，有效富集/培养癌症干细胞对于癌症的理解和治疗都很重要。然而，广泛使用的通过形成含癌症干细胞的聚集体来富集癌症干细胞的传统方法通常需要大约10天时间。在此，我们报告基于表面受体标志物的表达、染料排斥、基因和蛋白质表达以及体内致瘤性，在获得质量更好的含前列腺癌干细胞聚集体的同时，时间可缩短至2天。这是通过将人前列腺癌细胞封装在具有藻酸盐水凝胶壳的微胶囊的小型化3D液芯中进行培养来实现的。核壳微胶囊中的小型化3D培养是一种在体外富集/培养癌症干细胞以促进癌症研究和治疗发展的有效策略。
