First 3-D culture system for pancreatic cancer developed

Scientists have developed a new method to grow human pancreatic tissue in a three-dimensional culture system, paving the way for future personalised treatment approaches for deadly pancreatic cancer.
Pancreatic cancer is one of the most deadly forms of cancer, with only 6 per cent of patients surviving five years after diagnosis, researchers said.
Researchers at the Cold Spring Harbour Laboratory (CSHL) and The Lustgarten Foundation have now developed a new model system to grow both normal and cancerous pancreatic cells in the laboratory.
Their work offers the potential to change the way pancreatic cancer research is done, allowing scientists to interrogate the pathways driving this devastating disease while searching for new drug targets.

Researchers described a three-dimensional "organoid" culture system for pancreatic cancer.
They developed a method to grow pancreatic tissue not only from laboratory mouse models, but also from human patient tissue, offering a path to personalised treatment approaches in the future.

By comparing normal cells to cancer cells, scientists can identify the changes that lead to disease. However, both types of pancreatic cells have been extremely difficult to culture in the laboratory.
The normal ductal cells that are able to develop into pancreatic cancer represent about 10 per cent of the cells in the pancreas, complicating efforts to pinpoint the changes that occur as the tumour develops.

Until now, scientists have been entirely unable to culture human normal ductal pancreatic cells under standard laboratory conditions.
Because of these limitations, most pancreatic cancer research relies on genetically engineered mouse models of the disease, which can take up to one year to generate.
"With this development, we are now able to culture both mouse and human organoids, providing a very powerful tool in our fight against pancreatic cancer," said Tuveson.
The organoids are entirely made up of ductal cells, eliminating the surrounding cell types that often contaminate samples from the pancreas.
They grow as hollow spheres within a complex gel-like substance filled with growth-inducing factors and connecting fibres.

Once they have grown to a sufficient size, the organoids can be transplanted back into mice, where they fully recapitulate pancreatic cancer.
The study was published in the journal Cell.