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  3. Engineered Endometrial Clear Cell Cancer-on-a-Chip Reveals Early Invasion-Metastasis Cascade of Cancer Cells

Engineered Endometrial Clear Cell Cancer-on-a-Chip Reveals Early Invasion-Metastasis Cascade of Cancer Cells

  • Biomater Res. 2025 Apr 14:29:0177. doi: 10.34133/bmr.0177.
Chengpan Li 1,  Jing Pan 2,  Zhengdi Shi 1,  Xinyan Zeng 3,  Xiaoping Xia 4,  Xiaogang He 5,  Wei Wang 2,  Bensheng Qiu 1,  Weiping Ding 2,  Dabing Huang 2
Affiliations

Affiliations

  • 1 Department of Electronic Engineering and Information Science, School of Information Science and Technology, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui 230027, China.
  • 2 Department of Oncology, The First Affiliated Hospital of USTC, Division of Life Sciences and Medicine, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui 230001, China.
  • 3 Department of Integrated Traditional Chinese and Western Medicine, Anhui Medical University, Hefei, Anhui 230032, China.
  • 4 Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Anhui Provincial Children's Hospital, Children's Hospital of Fudan University Anhui Hospital, Children's Hospital of Anhui Medical University, Hefei, Anhui 230022, China.
  • 5 Department of Urology, The First Affiliated Hospital of USTC, Division of Life Sciences and Medicine, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui 230001, China.
PMID: 40231208 DOI: 10.34133/bmr.0177
Abstract

Endometrial clear cell Cancer (ECCC) is an extremely rare and highly malignant subtype of endometrial Cancer. For most ECCC patients, Cancer metastasis is the major cause of death. To date, due to the complexity of Cancer evolution and the small number of cases, the metastasis of ECCC at the early stage remains largely unknown. Herein, we modeled the early invasion-metastasis cascade of ECCC by coculturing the ECCC patient-derived tumor cells (PDTCs) and primary human vascular endothelial cells on a microfluidic chip. With the chip, we for the first time replicated the dynamic migration of PDTCs into the surrounding stroma, including the intravasation and extravasation of PDTCs through the capillaries/microvessels, and presented the changes in the morphology and permeability of capillaries, with the decreased diameter and the increased permeability after Cancer metastasis. We found that PDTCs were more invasive than the common endometrial adenocarcinoma cells. In addition, we preliminarily explored the inhibition of drugs on the early PDTC infiltration. This study provides new ideas for better understanding of ECCC evolution.

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