Why does prostate cancer metastasize to the skeleton?
(Nathalie Niyonzima) In a previous master project, we have shown that osteoblast cells induce certain changes in prostate cancer cells when the two cell types grown together, so they can exchange signal material through the culture media. The changes can be measured as the changed expression of a number of genes, by measuring mRNA using micro arrays. Some of the changes can be interpreted as expressions of stimulation of cancer cells’ aggressive behaviour. An important support for this interpretation would be if we were able to show that cancer cells show greater invasive capacity, measured in a quantitative in vitro invasion model (a matrigel invasion chamber). The cells we have used in multicell culture research show a strong tendency to be invasive, such that we have to adapt the system to this problem. If the model shows that culturing cells with osteoblasts results in higher invasiveness, it would be very interesting to try to suppress expression of one or more of the proteins tha
