DUGi

Electrospinning PCL Scaffolds Manufacture for Three-Dimensional Breast Cancer Cell Culture

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In vitro cell culture is traditionally performed within two-dimensional (2D) environments,providing a quick and cheap way to study cell properties in a laboratory. However, 2D systemsdiffer from the in vivo environment and may not mimic the physiological cell behavior realistically.For instance, 2D culture models are thought to induce cancer stem cells (CSCs) differentiation,a rare cancer cell subpopulation responsible for tumor initiation and relapse. This fact hinders thedevelopment of therapeutic strategies for tumors with a high relapse percentage, such as triplenegative breast cancer (TNBC). Thus, three-dimensional (3D) scaffolds have emerged as an attractivealternative to monolayer culture, simulating the extracellular matrix structure and maintaining thedifferentiation state of cells. In this work, scaffolds were fabricated through electrospinning differentpoly("-caprolactone)-acetone solutions. Poly("-caprolactone) (PCL) meshes were seeded with triplenegative breast cancer (TNBC) cells and 15% PCL scaffolds displayed significantly (p < 0.05) highercell proliferation and elongation than the other culture systems. Moreover, cells cultured on PCLscaffolds exhibited higher mammosphere forming capacity and aldehyde dehydrogenase activity than2D-cultured cells, indicating a breast CSCs enrichment. These results prove the powerful capabilityof electrospinning technology in terms of poly("-caprolactone) nanofibers fabrication. In addition,this study has demonstrated that electrospun 15% PCL scaffolds are suitable tools to culture breastcancer cells in a more physiological way and to expand the niche of breast CSCs. In conclusion,three-dimensional cell culture using PCL scaffolds could be useful to study cancer stem cell behaviorand may also trigger the development of new specific targets against such malignant subpopulation

This work was supported partially by Spanish grants from Fundación Ramón Areces, Instituto de Salud Carlos III (PI1400329) and Ministerio de Economía Y Competitividad (DPI2013-45201-P; RYC-2014-15581), and the support of the Catalonian government (2014SGR00868). The authors are grateful for the financial support from the University of Girona (MPCUdG2016/036)

MDPI (Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute)