Deciphering the Mechanism of Lymphovascular Space Invasion Using a Lymphovascularized Bioengineering Breast Stromal Platform
Highly aggressive cancers are frequently characterized by tumor cell emboli within the lymphatic and blood vasculature. Termed lymphovascular space invasion (LVSI), this phenomenon has been of high interest to cancer researchers as it may represent one of the necessary events during progression from a localized to metastatic cancer. Despite these biological implications, relatively little is known about the mechanisms that directly enable and promote LVSI formation. Existing in vitro systems lack the multi-tissue and vascular complexity to model these events. In vivo models, while available, are not amenable to mechanistic studies or pharmacological screening because of the sheer number of animals required for such experiments. Therefore, a critical need in the field is to develop models that can faithfully recreate specific phenomena related to metastatic spread, such as LVSI. Using our novel, multi-cellular, vascularized 3D in vitro platform, we were able to model intravasation of ep