The National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) said researchers at Seoul National University and Yokohama National University found that free fatty acids (FFA) aggravate cancer cell metastasis in the fat cells near cancer areas.
The new finding is expected to become a clue for explaining the correlation between cancer cells and fat cells, it said.
The joint team of Professor Chun Yang-suk and first author Seo Ji-eun from Seoul National University and Yokohama National University conducted the study using polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS), a silicon-based organic polymer, which have grown to have high oxygen transmittance, allowing fat and cancer cells indirectly.
In the three-dimensional cultivating circular structure, the team embodied a cancer microenvironment that cells can grow together, similar to the actual biological environment, by cultivating cancer and fat cells at the adjusted ratio. They found that the fat cells are the stimuli that activate the HIF-1α in adjacent cancer cells by cultivating cells together in the three-dimensional cultivating chip.
Researchers compared the density of cell collections that grow into spheroids by cultivating several combinations of cells on a chip of over 1,700 sections (500㎛ each) and found that cancer and fat cells' density fell 30 percent.
The team concluded that cancer cells moved actively, and if isolated fatty acids are removed chemically, cancer cell metastasis did not change much.
Besides, the team confirmed mice models with fluorescent-marked cancer cells, cancer cells spread from the colon to the liver and head. Similarly, when injecting RNA containing HIF-1α with fatty acids, the movement of cancer cells was halved.
The NRF said the study is significant. “Although it is recognized that cancer cells grow and transfer by inflammatory promotion factors or adipokine secreted by fat cells around cancer, various studies have not proved the effects of fatty acids released by fat cells around cancer,” it said.
Researchers can use the three-dimensional culture chip to trace the correlation between various types of matrix cells and cancer cells, the foundation added.
The study results were published in Biomaterials on Dec. 29.