The effect of hypoxia and 3D culture conditions on heterogeneous ovarian cancer spheroids

Epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) is the leading cause of death from gynecological malignancy due to the insufficient accurate screening programs for the early detection of EOC. To improve the accuracy of the early detection, there is a need to deeply understand the mechanism of EOC progression and the interaction between cancer cells with their unique microenvironment. Therefore, this work investigated the metabolic shift in the mouse model for progressive ovarian cancer, and evaluated the effects of hypoxic environment, spheroid formation as well as stromal vascular fractions (SVF) on the metabolic shift, proliferation rate, drug resistance and protein markers in functional categories. The results demonstrated an increasingly glycolytic nature of MOSE cells as they progress from a tumorigenic (MOSE-L) to a highly aggressive phenotype (MOSE-FFL), and also showed changes in metabolism during ovarian cancer spheroid formation with SVF under different oxygen levels. More specifically, the hypoxic environment enhanced glycolytic shift by upregulating the glucose uptake and lactate secretion, and the spheroid formation affected the cellular metabolism by increasing the lactate secretion to acidify local environments, modulating the expression of cell adhesion molecules to enhance cell motility and spheroids disaggregation, and up-regulating invasiveness markers and stemness makers to promote ovarian cancer aggressive potential. Hypoxia and spheroid formation decreased ovarian cancer cells growth but increased the chemoresistance, which leads to the promotion of aggressiveness and metastasis potential of ovarian cancer. SVF co-cultured spheroids further increased the glycolytic shift of the heterogeneous of ovarian cancer spheroids, induced the aggressive phenotype by elevating the corresponding protein markers. Decreasing the glycolytic shift and suppression of the proteins/pathways may be used to inhibit aggressiveness or metastatic potential of ovarian cancer heterogeneous of ovarian cancer spheroids, induced the aggressive phenotype by elevating the corresponding protein markers. Decreasing the glycolytic shift and suppression of the proteins/pathways may be used to inhibit aggressiveness or metastatic potential of ovarian cancer.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Science

Level thesis:degree_level

masters

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Human Nutrition, Foods, and Exercise

Department dc:contributor.department

Human Nutrition, Foods, and Exercise

Grantor dc:publisher

Virginia Tech

Year dc:date.issued

2017

Author dc:creator

• Liu, Lu

Chair dc:contributor.committeechair

• Schmelz, Eva M.

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Huckle, William R.
• Frisard, Madlyn I.

• ovarian cancer
• metabolism
• hypoxia
• spheroids
• stromal vascular fractions
• invasiveness

Statement dc:rights

• In Copyright

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Dc Identifier Other

vt_gsexam:9486

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/74235