Nanolive is happy to share a new publication in Radiology and Oncology, from users of the 3D Cell Explorer at the Medical University of Innsbruck, in Austria [1].

To date, one of the challenges in breast cancer clinical oncology is its metastatic progression, which is thought to be responsible for most breast cancer deaths. Thus, it is crucial to unveil the molecular mechanism underlying the process in order to develop biomarkers or to establish new therapeutic targets that could help improve clinical outcome in individuals suffering from breast cancer.

To address this issue, Negro and colleagues studied in vivo and in vitro parental and invasive cells from different types of breast carcinomas. They performed analysis regarding cell morphology, migratory and invasive abilities and marker expression, as well as cell proliferation, protein expression and molecular pathway activation linked to invasiveness.

They concluded that the different types of breast carcinoma cells studied coincided in terms of cellular morphology and linked increased invasiveness and migratory capacities. Nevertheless, the pathways associated with their increased metastatic properties differed between cell types. To that regard, they suggest that hormone receptor-positive invasive cells and triple-negative breast cancer cells behave similarly while Her2-positive metastasis breast cancer cells differ from the previous.

Nanolive’s 3D Cell Explorer was used to reveal cell morphology of the different breast cancer cells studied (for details, see Figure 1 in their publication). The authors identified specific carcinoma cell morphology on the cells. For invasive cells, a spindle-like form was described, together with increased cellular surface in comparison to parental cells, as a result of membrane ruffling and pronounced filopodia and filopodia formation. Reduced number of lipid droplets and pronounced mitochondrial fission was described for invasive cells as compared to parental cells. Additionally, lipid droplet distribution also differed between cells.

The full text is available here!

[1] Negro, G., Aschenbrenner, B., Brezar, S., et al. (2020). Molecular heterogeneity in breast carcinoma cells with increased invasive capacities. Radiology and Oncology, 0(0), pp. -. Retrieved 5 Mar. 2020, from doi:10.2478/raon-2020-0007

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