Spheroids of FAP-Positive Cell Lines as a Model for Screening Drugs That Affect FAP Expression
Fibroblast activation protein has a unique expression profile that manifests mainly in wounds and tumors, which anticipates it as an encouraging and selective target for anticancer therapy. However, research of the therapeutic potential of FAP is limited both by legal restraints when working in vivo...
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Published in | Biomedicines Vol. 11; no. 7; p. 2017 |
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Main Authors | , , , |
Format | Journal Article |
Language | English |
Published |
Switzerland
MDPI AG
01.07.2023
MDPI |
Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
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Summary: | Fibroblast activation protein has a unique expression profile that manifests mainly in wounds and tumors, which anticipates it as an encouraging and selective target for anticancer therapy. However, research of the therapeutic potential of FAP is limited both by legal restraints when working in vivo and by the difficulty of obtaining standardized primary cultures of FAP-positive cancer-associated fibroblasts due to their high heterogeneity. We found that 3D spheroids of FAP-positive cell lines could serve as robust and convenient models of FAP expression, in contrast to monolayers. By exposing such spheroids to various factors and compounds, it is possible to study changes in FAP expression, which are easily detected by confocal microscopy. FAP expression increases under the influence of the TGFβ, does not depend on pH, and decreases during hypoxia and starvation. We believe that the proposed model could be used to organize large-scale high-throughput screening of drugs that target FAP expression. |
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Bibliography: | ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23 |
ISSN: | 2227-9059 2227-9059 |
DOI: | 10.3390/biomedicines11072017 |