Tissue-engineered organ-specific cancer metastasis model for cancer research

Understanding the biology of cancer metastasis is crucial for developing more effective treatments in oncology. A significant challenge in this area has been the lack of cancer models that accurately reflect the biology of metastasis, especially regarding organ-specificity, which is a key feature of cancer spread. This creates a strong unmet need for new models that can mimic the organ-specific dynamics of tumor spread. Our research group has been utilizing tissue engineering techniques to develop in vitro models of cancer metastasis. We hypothesize that decellularized tissues can effectively replicate the organ microenvironment associated with metastatic processes, serving as platforms for tumor cell growth. We had previously reported the use of decellularized liver and lung tissue as strata for tumor metastasis modeling. In this study, we have expanded the model using a panel of decellularized tissues to study the “good soils” and “bad soils” of metastasis. In experiments using several cancer cell lines, we found that tumor cells can spontaneously cluster and form colonies on biomatrices derived from common metastatic sites, such as the liver and lungs, often referred to as “good soil.” Decellularized biomatrices from the upper and lower gastrointestinal tract, and pancreas can also recapitulate the “bad soil” of cancer metastasis. These findings underscore that our proposed model of cancer metastasis is a powerful tool for cancer biology research and has great potential for precision oncology.