Prostate Cancer Phenotype Influences Bone Mineralization at Metastasis: A Study Using an In Vitro Prostate Cancer Metastasis Testbed.

In this study, two types of prostate cancer cell lines, highly metastatic PC-3 and low metastatic MDA PCa 2b (PCa) were cultured on bone mimetic scaffolds to recapitulate metastasis to bone. A unique in vitro 3D tumor model that uses a sequential culture (SC) of human mesenchymal stem cells followed by seeding with cancer cells after bone formation was initiated to study the phenotype-specific interaction between prostate cancer cells and bone microenvironment. The PCa cells were observed to be less prolific and less metastatic, and to form multicellular tumoroids in the bone microenvironment, whereas PC-3 cells were more prolific and were highly metastatic, and did not form multicellular tumoroids in the bone microenvironment.