• Francesca Sensi, Edoardo D'angelo, Andrea Biccari, Asia Marangio, Giulia Battisti, Sara Crotti, Matteo Fassan, Cecilia Laterza, Monica Giomo, Nicola Elvassore, Gaya Spolverato, Salvatore Pucciarelli, and Marco Agostini.
• Department of Women and Children's Health, University of Padova, Italy; Fondazione Istituto di Ricerca Pediatrica Città della Speranza, Padova, Italy.
• Transl Res. 2023 Mar 1; 253: 576757-67.

AbstractPancreatic cancer is likely to become one of the leading causes of cancer-related death in many countries within the next decade. Surgery is the potentially curative treatment for pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC), although only 10%-20% of patients have a resectable disease after diagnosis. Despite recent advances in curative surgery the current prognosis ranges from 6% to 10% globally. One of the main issues at the pre-clinical level is the lacking of model which simultaneously reflects the tumour microenvironment (TME) at both structural and cellular levels. Here we describe an innovative tissue engineering approach applied to PDAC starting from decellularized human biopsies in order to generate an organotypic 3D in vitro model. This in vitro 3D system recapitulates the ultrastructural environment of native tissue as demonstrated by histology, immunohistochemistry, immunofluorescence, mechanical analysis, and scanning electron microscopy. Mass spectrometry confirmed a different extracellular matrix (ECM) composition between decellularized healthy pancreas and PDAC by identifying a total of 110 non-redundant differently expressed proteins. Immunofluorescence analyses after 7 days of scaffold recellularization with PANC-1 and AsPC-1 pancreatic cell lines, were performed to assess the biocompatibility of 3D matrices to sustain engraftment, localization and infiltration. Finally, both PANC-1 and AsPC-1 cells cultured in 3D matrices showed a reduced response to treatment with FOLFIRINOX if compared to conventional bi-dimensional culture. Our 3D culture system with patient-derived tissue-specific decellularized ECM better recapitulates the pancreatic cancer microenvironment compared to conventional 2D culture conditions and represents a relevant approach for the study of pancreatic cancer response to chemotherapy agents.Copyright © 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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