Oregon Health & Science University has secured $9.2 million in federal funding to develop advanced lab-grown tissue models that could transform how doctors treat prostate cancer that spreads to bone, a complication affecting more than 80% of men with advanced disease. These "organs-on-a-chip" are transparent devices about the size of a USB stick containing living human cells arranged to mimic real tissues, allowing researchers to watch cancer behavior in real time at the cellular level.

Why Does Prostate Cancer Spread to Bone So Often?

Prostate cancer has a particularly aggressive tendency to migrate to bone tissue. More than 80% of people with advanced prostate cancer develop bone tumors, which can cause severe pain, broken bones, and other serious complications. Understanding why this happens, and how to stop it, has been a major challenge in cancer research because traditional laboratory and animal models fail to capture the complexity of how human cancers actually behave in the body.

One of the three NIH-funded projects, led by Luiz Bertassoni, D.D.S., Ph.D., focuses specifically on this problem. His team will use lab-grown bone tissues that include working blood vessels and nerves to investigate how physical forces in blood vessels and signals from nerves help tumor cells lodge in bone and become more aggressive.

How Do These Miniature Tissue Models Work?

The organs-on-a-chip technology represents a significant leap forward in cancer research. These devices contain living human cells arranged to mimic real tissues, including bone, blood vessels, and distant organs such as the lung. Researchers can observe cancer behavior in real time at single-cell resolution using human-derived cells, something that was simply not possible before with traditional methods.

Bertassoni's highly advanced "bone-on-a-chip" system combines bone, blood vessels, and nerves in one realistic human model, creating the most complete lab system to date for studying how prostate cancer spreads to bone. This integrated approach allows scientists to isolate and study individual factors one by one.

"Bone is not a passive target. Its blood vessels, nerves and mechanical properties actively influence whether cancer cells stop, survive and thrive. These models allow us to isolate and study those factors one by one," said Luiz Bertassoni.

Luiz Bertassoni, D.D.S., Ph.D., Professor of Oncological Sciences, Bioengineering and Dentistry, and Director of the Knight Cancer Precision Biofabrication Hub at OHSU

What Will Researchers Study in These Lab Models?

Bertassoni's team has two main goals for their $2.5 million award. First, they will study how the unique physical forces inside bone blood vessels help cancer cells escape into bone tissue and begin destroying it, closely examining how being squeezed affects cancer cells at the genetic level. Second, they will investigate how communication between nerves and cancer cells speeds up bone damage and tumor growth.

By understanding these mechanisms, the research could reveal new drug targets to stop or slow bone metastasis and provide a powerful new tool for studying cancer spread. The technology is also adaptable across cancer types; a previous NIH award to Bertassoni's lab supports similar studies in head and neck cancers that erode bone, demonstrating the versatility of the platform.

Steps to Understanding This Research Breakthrough

• The Problem: More than 80% of men with advanced prostate cancer develop bone tumors, causing severe pain and broken bones, yet traditional research methods cannot adequately study how this happens in human tissue.
• The Solution: Scientists are building miniature human tissue models about the size of a USB stick that contain living bone, blood vessels, and nerves to watch cancer cells interact with their environment in real time.
• The Goal: By observing how physical forces in blood vessels and nerve signals help cancer cells survive in bone, researchers hope to identify new drug targets that could stop or slow the spread of prostate cancer.
• The Impact: These discoveries could lead to safer, more effective treatments that target both cancer cells and their supportive environment, paving the way for future clinical trials and better outcomes for men with prostate cancer.

The funding represents a deliberate investment by OHSU and the Knight Cancer Institute in interdisciplinary science, bringing together engineers, cancer biologists, imaging experts, and clinicians to address complex diseases. The three grants total nearly $9.2 million and establish OHSU as a leader in using engineered human tissue models to study bone cancers and cancers that grow to the bone.

"These projects represent exactly what the Biofabrication Hub was created to do. We are leveraging technologies developed here to study complex, aggressive cancers in ways that simply weren't possible before," explained Luiz Bertassoni.

Luiz Bertassoni, Director of the Knight Cancer Precision Biofabrication Hub at OHSU

The National Institutes of Health is prioritizing more human-relevant models in cancer research, recognizing that traditional laboratory and animal approaches have significant limitations. These organs-on-a-chip devices allow researchers to generate the complexity of real human tissue in the laboratory and investigate important questions that cannot be studied directly in patients.

For men concerned about prostate cancer risk, this research underscores the importance of discussing screening options with a healthcare provider, particularly those with a family history of the disease or other risk factors. While these lab models are still in the research phase, the discoveries emerging from them could eventually lead to more targeted and effective treatments for men whose prostate cancer has spread to bone.

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