This website uses cookies to give you the best user experience. If you continue
without changing your settings we'll assume you are happy to receive all RSC cookies.
You can change your cookie settings by navigating to our Privacy and Cookies page and following the instructions. These instructions
are also obtainable from the privacy link at the bottom of any RSC page.
Italian National Research Council - Institute for Photonics and Nanotechnologies (CNR – IFN), Via Cineto Romano 42, Rome, Italy
E-mail: luca.businaro@cnr.it
; Fax: +39 064152 2202
; Tel: +39-064152 2265
b
Istituto Superiore di Sanità, Dept of Hematology, Oncology and Molecular Medicine, Viale Regina Elena 299, Rome, Italy
E-mail: fabrizio.mattei@iss.it
; Fax: +39-064990 2788
; Tel: +39-0649902837
Lab Chip, 2013,13, 229-239
DOI:
10.1039/C2LC40887B
Received
03 Aug 2012,
Accepted
27 Sep 2012
First published online
01 Oct 2012
The reconstitution of a complex microenvironment on microfluidic chips is one of the cornerstones to demonstrate the improved flexibility of these devices with respect to macroscale in vitro approaches. In this work, we realised an on-chip model to investigate the interactions between cancer and immune system. To this end, we exploited mice deficient (Knock Out, KO) for interferon regulatory factor 8 (IRF-8), a transcription factor essential for the induction of competent immune responses, to investigate how IRF-8 gene expression contributes to regulate immune and melanoma cells crosstalk. In vivo, IRF-8 KO mice are highly permissive to B16 melanoma growth due to failure of immune cells to properly exert immunosurveillance. B16 cells and immune cells isolated from the spleen of wild type (WT) and IRF-8 KO mice were co-cultured for one week in a PDMS platform and monitored by fluorescence microscopy and time-lapse recordings. We observed that WT spleen cells migrated through microchannels connecting the culturing chambers towards B16 cells and tightly interacted with tumor cells, forming clusters of activation. In contrast, IRF-8 KO immune cells poorly interacted with melanoma cells. In parallel, B16 cells were more attracted towards microchannels, acquiring a more invasive behaviour in the presence of IRF-8 KO spleen cells, with respect to WT cells. Our results strongly confirm the in vivo observations and highlight the value of on-chip co-culture systems as a useful in vitro tool to elucidate the reciprocal interactions between cancer cells and host immune system, with relevant impact in the development of more effective anti-tumor therapeutic strategies.
Fetching data from CrossRef. This may take some time to load.