Figure 7.

The tumor-neuroglia interaction facilitates cancer dissemination in vivo. A. Schematic illustration of the animal experiment design. In brief, luc-AsPC-1 cells were cultured alone or co-cultivated with human SCs, or co-cultured with human SCs in the presence of IL6 or IL1β neutralizing antibodies. Forty-eight hours later, luc-AsPC-1 cells were digested and injected into the lateral tail vein of SCID mice. Four weeks after injection, lung metastasis was detected using an in vivo imaging system. B. Numbers of mice that developed lung metastasis in each group at the end of experiment are shown. C. Representative images of mice that developed lung metastasis in each group are shown, as visualized using the Bruker In-Vivo Xtreme imaging system. D. Quantitative analysis of the bioluminescence intensity from the lung were acquired using the Bruker molecular imaging software. E. At the end of animal experiment, all mice were sacrificed and their lungs were excised, photographed, and sectioned. The upper panel presents the macroscopic appearance of metastatic lung tumors; the lower panel presents the H&E staining. Scale bar:100 μm. F. Statistical analysis of metastatic nodules in the lung. G. Schematic illustration of the crosstalk between SCs and pancreatic cancer cells. Tumor cells secrete IL1β to activate the NF-κB pathway in SCs and increase IL6 production from SCs, which binds to IL6R on cancer cells and promotes PCa cell metastasis via the activation of STAT3 signaling. In summary, SCs could acquire a tumor-promoting phenotype by interacting with pancreatic cancer cells.