Background to the study
Bone metastasis, which is a transfer of cancer from solid tumors to bone, commonly originates from thyroid, gynecologic, breast, colorectal, lung, prostate, and melanoma [1].
The two most frequent cancer types that metastases to bone originate from is breast cancer and prostate cancer.
Unfortunately, there is currently no effective treatment once the tumor cells have metastasized to bone. Finding treatments of metastases to bone is therefore a major challenge in the field of research [1, 2].
One of the problems in this research is the design of a proper bone marrow model , especially because bone marrow has a very complex 3D microenvironment [2].
Cancer models for research on metastasis to bone
To date, models used for research on metastasis to bone have typically exploited animal models or 2D cell cultures using human cell lines. However, animal models differ in physiology and metabolism between species and 2D cell cultures of human cell lines cannot imitate the 3D microenvironment of metastases in bone [3, 4].
Meanwhile, organoids present a promising alternative or supplement as these models maintain cell-to-cell contact by providing a 3D environment for the natural expansion of cells [3]. Thereby, organoids may overcome some of the challenges that 2D cell cultures and animal models (such as Caenorhabditis eleangans, Drosophila melanogaster and Mus musculus) faces. Still, this depends on the construct of the human organoid.