Department of Gastroenterology, Tongji Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, 430030, China.
Curr Med Sci. 2019 Jun;39(3):391-395. doi: 10.1007/s11596-019-2048-9. Epub 2019 Jun 17.
Overcrowding and cell deformation lead to the shedding of apoptotic and live cells to maintain homeostasis in the epithelium. Recent studies have attempted to explain the effect of extrusion on epithelial homeostasis and tumor metastasis, but lack the requisite quantitative models for testing extrusion. Here, we designed a petri dish inversion model to detect the extrusion ability of both normal epithelial cells and epithelial cancer cells. Firstly, we found cell extrusion was observed in both normal epithelial cells (LO2 cells) and cancer cells; in confluent LO2 cell culture, certain cells were surrounded by their neighbors, suffered "collective attack", and were then made round in shape. Green fluorescent protein (GFP)-labeled cancer cells were also found to be squeezed by normal LO2 cells. Using the petri dish inversion model, we quantified the number of extrusion cells, and demonstrated that the ability of cancer cell extrusion was related to the metastatic potential of cancer cell lines. Our findings provide a novel model to detect crowding-induced epithelial cell and cancer cell extrusion. This novel model provides a quantitative method for research into apoptotic and cancer cell extrusion, particularly in human hepatocellular carcinoma.
细胞拥挤和变形导致凋亡和活细胞脱落，以维持上皮细胞的内稳态。最近的研究试图解释挤压对上皮细胞稳态和肿瘤转移的影响，但缺乏必要的定量模型来测试挤压。在这里，我们设计了一个培养皿倒置模型来检测正常上皮细胞和上皮癌细胞的挤出能力。首先，我们发现细胞挤出现象在正常上皮细胞（LO2 细胞）和癌细胞中均有观察到；在 LO2 细胞的致密培养中，某些细胞被其周围的细胞包围，受到“集体攻击”，然后变成圆形。还发现绿色荧光蛋白（GFP）标记的癌细胞被正常 LO2 细胞挤出。使用培养皿倒置模型，我们量化了挤出细胞的数量，并证明癌细胞挤出的能力与癌细胞系的转移潜能有关。我们的研究结果提供了一种检测拥挤诱导的上皮细胞和癌细胞挤出的新模型。该模型为研究凋亡和癌细胞挤出提供了一种定量方法，特别是在人肝癌细胞中。
