Department of Material Sciences and Process Engineering, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, BOKU, Vienna, Austria.
The European Synchrotron, Grenoble, France.
J Struct Biol. 2019 Jul 1;207(1):56-66. doi: 10.1016/j.jsb.2019.04.012. Epub 2019 Apr 17.
Osteosarcoma is the most common primary bone cancer type in humans. It is predominantly found in young individuals, with a second peak later in life. The tumour is formed by malignant osteoblasts and consists of collagenous, sometimes also mineralized, bone matrix. While the morphology of osteosarcoma has been well studied, there is virtually no information about the nanostructure of the tumour and changes in mineralization on the nanoscale level. In the present paper, human bone tissue inside, next to and remote from a sclerosing osteosarcoma was studied with small angle x-ray scattering, x-ray diffraction and electron microscopy. Quantitative evaluation of nanostructure parameters was combined with high resolution, large area mapping to obtain microscopic images with nanostructure parameter contrast. It was found that the tumour regions were characterized by a notable reduction in mineral particle size, while the mineral content was even higher than that in normal bone. Furthermore, the normal preferential orientation of mineral particles along the longitudinal direction of corticalis or trabeculae was largely suppressed. Also the bone mineral crystal structure was affected: severe crystal lattice distortions were detected in mineralized tumour tissue pointing to a different ion substitution of hydroxyl apatite in tumorous tissue than in healthy tissue.
骨肉瘤是人类中最常见的原发性骨癌类型。它主要发生在年轻人中，后期生命中还有第二个高峰。肿瘤由恶性成骨细胞形成，由胶原质组成，有时还含有矿化的骨基质。虽然骨肉瘤的形态学已经得到了很好的研究，但实际上几乎没有关于肿瘤纳米结构和纳米尺度矿化变化的信息。在本文中，我们使用小角度 X 射线散射、X 射线衍射和电子显微镜研究了硬化性骨肉瘤内部、附近和远处的人类骨组织。纳米结构参数的定量评估与高分辨率、大面积映射相结合，获得具有纳米结构参数对比度的微观图像。结果发现，肿瘤区域的特征是矿物质颗粒尺寸明显减小，而矿物质含量甚至高于正常骨。此外，正常情况下矿物质颗粒沿着皮质或小梁的纵向方向的优先取向也被大大抑制。此外，骨矿物质的晶体结构也受到影响：在矿化的肿瘤组织中检测到严重的晶格畸变，表明肿瘤组织中羟磷灰石的离子取代与健康组织不同。
