FGF2 engineered SPIONs attenuate tumor stroma and potentiate the effect of chemotherapy in 3D heterospheroidal model of pancreatic tumor

Deby Fajar Mardhian, Aggelos Vrynas, Gert Storm, Ruchi Bansal, Jai Prakash*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

19 Citations (Scopus)
70 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC), characterized with abundant tumor stroma, is a highly malignant tumor with poor prognosis. The tumor stroma largely consists of cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs) and extracellular matrix (ECM), and is known to promote tumor growth and progression as well as acts as a barrier to chemotherapy. Inhibition of tumor stroma is highly crucial to induce the effect of chemotherapy. In this study, we delivered fibroblast growth factor 2 (FGF2) to human pancreatic stellate cells (hPSCs), the precursors of CAFs, using superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (SPIONs). FGF2 was covalently conjugated to functionalized PEGylated dextran-coated SPIONs. FGF2-SPIONs significantly reduced TGF-β induced hPSCs differentiation (α-SMA and collagen-1 expression) by inhibiting pSmad2/3 signaling and inducing ERK1/2 activity, as shown with western blot analysis. Then, we established a stroma-rich self-assembling 3D heterospheroid model by co-culturing PANC-1 and hPSCs in 3D environment. We found that FGF2-SPIONs treatment alone inhibited the tumor stroma-induced spheroid growth. In addition, they also potentiated the effect of gemcitabine, as shown by measuring the spheroid size and ATP content. These effects were attributed to the reduced expression of the hPSC activation and differentiation marker, α-SMA. Furthermore, to demonstrate an application of SPIONs, we applied an external magnetic field to spheroids while incubated with FGF2-SPIONs. This resulted in an enhanced effect of gemcitabine in our 3D model. In conclusion, this study presents a novel approach to target FGF2 to tumor stroma using SPIONs and thereby enhancing the effect of gemcitabine as demonstrated in the complex 3D tumor spheroid model.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)26-39
Number of pages14
JournalNanotheranostics
Volume4
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Jan 2020

Keywords

  • Cancer-associated fibroblasts
  • Fibroblast growth factor 2
  • Pancreatic cancer
  • Pancreatic stellate cells
  • Superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles

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