In vitro study of liver tumor induced endothelial cell angiogenesis in microfluidic platform

Abstract

Cancer cells metastasis is an important medical problem which causes 90% of human cancer deaths. Angiogenesis plays essential roles in metastasis and secondary tumor growth. Extensive study on tumor angiogenesis is required to understand the mechanism of tumor angiogenesis and to find out efficient anti-angiogenic therapy. Microfluidic system, mimicking the real metastatic physiological situations, is increasingly being utilized to study tumor angiogenesis. In this study, a new 3D microfluidic model was designed and applied to study the effect of liver tumor-induced endothelial angiogenesis. Human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVEC-C3) transfected with the caspase-3-based FRET biosensor that are capable of indicating caspase-3 activation were seeded into microchannels, and results indicated that the addition of liver hepatocellular carcinoma (Hep-G2) cell can promote the angiogenesis of HUVEC-C3 cells towards the Hep-G2 cell spheroids. Subsequently, the successfully designed 3D micro-fluidic systems will be utilized to study the effect of angiogenesis inducing factors vessel-endothelial growth factor (VEGF) and tumor growth factor-beta (TGF-beta), anti-cancer drug (Taxol and angiogenesis inhibitor as well.