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The cancer angiogenesis co-culture assay: In vitro quantification of the angiogenic potential of tumoroids.

ABSTRACT: The treatment response to anti-angiogenic agents varies among cancer patients and predictive biomarkers are needed to identify patients with resistant cancer or guide the choice of anti-angiogenic treatment. We present "the Cancer Angiogenesis Co-Culture (CACC) assay", an in vitro Functional Precision Medicine assay which enables the study of tumouroid induced angiogenesis. This assay can quantify the ability of a patient-derived tumouroid to induce vascularization by measuring the induction of tube formation in a co-culture of vascular cells and tumoroids established from the primary colorectal tumour or a metastasis. Furthermore, the assay can quantify the sensitivity of patient-derived tumoroids to anti-angiogenic therapies. We observed that tube formation increased in a dose-dependent manner upon treatment with the pro-angiogenic factor vascular endothelial growth factor A (VEGF-A). When investigating the angiogenic potential of tumoroids from 12 patients we found that 9 tumoroid cultures induced a significant increase in tube formation compared to controls without tumoroids. In these 9 angiogenic tumoroid cultures the tube formation could be abolished by treatment with one or more of the investigated anti-angiogenic agents. The 3 non-angiogenic tumoroid cultures secreted VEGF-A but we observed no correlation between the amount of tube formation and tumoroid-secreted VEGF-A. Our data suggests that the CACC assay recapitulates the complexity of tumour angiogenesis, and when clinically verified, could prove a valuable tool to quantify sensitivity towards different anti-angiogenic agents.

SUBMITTER: Truelsen SLB

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8263287 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Project description:OBJECTIVES:The ability of tumor cells to drive angiogenesis is an important cancer hallmark that positively correlates with metastatic potential and poor prognosis. Therefore, targeting angiogenesis is a rational therapeutic approach and dissecting proangiogenic pathways is important, particularly for malignancies driven by oncogenic KRAS, which are widespread and lack effective targeted therapies. Based on published studies showing that oncogenic RAS promotes angiogenesis by upregulating the proangiogenic NF-?B target genes IL-8 and VEGF, that NF-?B activation by KRAS requires the IKK? kinase, and that targeting IKK? reduces KRAS-induced lung tumor growth in vivo, but has limited effects on cell growth in vitro, we hypothesized that IKK? targeting would reduce lung tumor growth by inhibiting KRAS-induced angiogenesis. MATERIALS AND METHODS:To test this hypothesis, we targeted IKK? in KRAS-mutant lung cancer cell lines either by siRNA-mediated transfection or by treatment with Compound A (CmpdA), a highly specific IKK? inhibitor, and used in vitro and in vivo assays to evaluate angiogenesis. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS:Both pharmacological and siRNA-mediated IKK? targeting in lung cells reduced expression and secretion of NF-?B-regulated proangiogenic factors IL-8 and VEGF. Moreover, conditioned media from IKK?-targeted lung cells reduced human umbilical vein endothelial cell (HUVEC) migration, invasion and tube formation in vitro. Furthermore, siRNA-mediated IKK? inhibition reduced xenograft tumor growth and vascularity in vivo. Finally, IKK? inhibition also affects endothelial cell function in a cancer-independent manner, as IKK? inhibition reduced pathological retinal angiogenesis in a mouse model of oxygen-induced retinopathy. Taken together, these results provide a novel mechanistic understanding of how the IKK? pathway affects human lung tumorigenesis, indicating that IKK? promotes KRAS-induced angiogenesis both by cancer cell-intrinsic and cancer cell-independent mechanisms, which strongly suggests IKK? inhibition as a promising antiangiogenic approach to be explored for KRAS-induced lung cancer therapy.

Project description:BackgroundTumor angiogenesis is a highly regulated process involving intercellular communication as well as the interactions of multiple downstream signal transduction pathways. Disrupting one or even a few angiogenesis pathways is often insufficient to achieve sustained therapeutic benefits due to the complexity of angiogenesis. Targeting multiple angiogenic pathways has been increasingly recognized as a viable strategy. However, translation of the polypharmacology of a given compound to its antiangiogenic efficacy remains a major technical challenge. Developing a global functional association network among angiogenesis-related genes is much needed to facilitate holistic understanding of angiogenesis and to aid the development of more effective anti-angiogenesis therapeutics.ResultsWe constructed a comprehensive gene functional association network or interactome by transcript profiling an in vitro angiogenesis model, in which human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) formed capillary structures when co-cultured with normal human dermal fibroblasts (NHDFs). HUVEC competence and NHDF supportiveness of cord formation were found to be highly cell-passage dependent. An enrichment test of Biological Processes (BP) of differentially expressed genes (DEG) revealed that angiogenesis related BP categories significantly changed with cell passages. Built upon 2012 DEGs identified from two microarray studies, the resulting interactome captured 17226 functional gene associations and displayed characteristics of a scale-free network. The interactome includes the involvement of oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes in angiogenesis. We developed a network walking algorithm to extract connectivity information from the interactome and applied it to simulate the level of network perturbation by three multi-targeted anti-angiogenic kinase inhibitors. Simulated network perturbation correlated with observed anti-angiogenesis activity in a cord formation bioassay.ConclusionWe established a comprehensive gene functional association network to model in vitro angiogenesis regulation. The present study provided a proof-of-concept pilot of applying network perturbation analysis to drug phenotypic activity assessment.

Project description:Autologous endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs) might be alternative angiogenic cell sources for vascularization of tissue-engineered bladder, while isolation and culture of EPCs from peripheral blood in adult are usually time-consuming and highly inefficient. Recent evidence has shown that EPCs also exist in the adipose tissue. As adipose tissue is plentiful in the human body and can be easily harvested through a minimally invasive method, the aim of this study was to culture and characterize EPCs from adipose tissue (ADEPCs) and investigate their potential for the neovascularization of tissue-engineered bladder. Adipose stromal vascular fraction (SVF) was isolated and used for the culture of ADEPCs and adipose derived stem cells (ADSCs). After SVF was cultured for one week, ADEPCs with typical cobblestone morphology emerged and could be isolated from ADSCs according to their different responses to trypsinization. Rat bladder smooth muscle cells (RBSMCs) were isolated and cultured from rat bladder. RBSMCs exhibited typical spindle-shaped morphology. ADEPCs had higher proliferative potential than ADSCs and RBSMCs. ADEPCs stained positive for CD34, Stro-1, VEGFR-2, eNOS and CD31 but negative for ?-SMA, CD14 and CD45. ADSCs stained positive for CD34, Stro-1 and ?-SMA but negative for VEGFR-2, eNOS, CD31, CD14 and CD45. RBSMCs stained only positive for ?-SMA. ADEPCs could be expanded from a single cell at an early passage to a cell cluster containing more than 10,000 cells. ADEPCs were able to uptake DiI-Ac-LDL, bind UEA-1 and form capillary-like structures in three-dimensional scaffolds (Matrigel and bladder acellular matrix). ADEPCs were also able to enhance the human umbilical vein endothelial cells' capability of capillary-like tube formation on Matrigel. Additionally, significantly higher levels of mRNA and protein of vascular endothelial growth factor were found in ADEPCs than in RBSMCs. These results suggest the potential use of ADEPCs as angiogenic cell sources for engineering bladder tissue.

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The cancer angiogenesis co-culture assay: In vitro quantification of the angiogenic potential of tumoroids.

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