The group questioned whether, despite an evolutionary distance of more than 300 million years separating zebrafish from humans, the zebrafish embryo might contain cues that could influence the behavior of human metastatic melanoma cells.
As in Hendrix's previous studies using other laboratory models, the current study showed that within the zebrafish embryo, metastatic melanoma cells retain their plastic phenotype; that is, the zebrafish microenvironment appears to suppress the tumor-forming abilities of malignant melanoma cells.
"The significance of this study is the potential offered by the zebrafish embryonic model to identify the tumor suppressive signals in the microenvironment that result in the reversal of the metastatic behavior of the tumor cells," Hendrix stated.
The researchers also found that human melanocytes (normal skin cells that contain melanin and may transform into cancerous melanoma tumors) transplanted into zebrafish embryos most frequently became distributed to the normal microenvironment of the skin.
This finding suggested that the zebrafish embryo contains possible homing cues that can be interpreted by normal human cells. Results of this study demonstrate the utility of the zebrafish embryonic model for the study of tumor cell plasticity and suggest that this experimental paradigm can be a powerful one in which to investigate tumor-microenvironment interactions leading to the reversal of the aggressive phenotype of tumor cells.
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Contact: Elizabeth Crown
e-crown@northwestern.edu
312-503-8928
Northwestern University
20-Jun-2005