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IN VITRO BONE MARROW MODELS TO INTERROGATE THE IMPACTS OF SEQUESTRATION AND SECRETION BY BONE MARROW ADIPOCYTES
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Abstract
Bone marrow has indisputable biological importance as the primary site of blood and
immune cell formation which is necessary throughout life. As such, significant progress
has been made towards dissecting the complexities of the bone marrow niche to harness its
clinical potential, with preclinical development centered on murine models to investigate
the biology of the bone marrow niche. With this, emerging evidence has demonstrated that
bone marrow adipocytes rapidly accumulating in bony cavities during aging with
concomitant decreases in bone mineralization and structural integrity. However, due to the
limited anatomical accessibility of the inner bone space, direct observation of the role and
function of bone marrow adipose tissue during homeostasis and disease is limited.
Resultantly, how bone marrow adipocytes affect bone remodeling remains poorly
characterized. Here, we report the development of an integrated in vitro bone and marrow model
to quantify and determine the impacts of bone marrow adipocytes on both the
pathophysiology of tumor cell relapse and bone remodeling. To this end, we first
established protocols for the isolation and differentiation of primary mesenchymal stromal
cells (MSC) to establish a mature adipocyte enriched marrow microenvironment using a
robust and rapid chemically defined differentiation method. Next, we independently
recapitulated the native bone surface by utilizing demineralized bone paper (DBP), a mechanically durable, semitransparent biomaterial derived from compact bovine bone
which retains the hierarchical architecture of collagen fibers and mimics the native osteoid
surface, which is subsequently remineralized by primary osteoblasts. Last, we integrated
these two distinct microenvironments into a single niche by fabricating an optically
transparent cell culture insert that fits standardized cell culture well plates to enable
quantitative spatial imaging of this microfabricated bone marrow microenvironment.
With these models, we report that the sequestration of the lipophilic
chemotherapeutic doxorubicin by fat droplets reduces its cytotoxicity and efficacy. In
addition, we further demonstrate that in a bone and marrow coculture model, uptake of
vitamin D3 by lipid droplets regulates the formation of osteoclasts and subsequently
resorption kinetics of mineralized DBP. Taken together, these results substantiate the utility
of bioengineered materials to capture native tissue complexity and decouple the role of
sequestration and secretion by bone marrow adipocytes towards tumor cell relapse and
bone remodeling. Ultimately, we view that rationally designed and microfabricated in vitro
models with high analytical power and prognostic capability opens the door for new areas,
such as 1) developing insight into how cellular components in the bone marrow
microenvironment orchestrate therapeutic resistance, 2) provides new orthogonal
opportunities to combat tumor relapse with a novel in vitro assay platform, and 3) holds
potential for mechanistically understanding how changes in the cellular microenvironment
promotes other diseases such as osteoporosis and bone loss during aging.
Type
Dissertation (Open Access)
Date
2024-05
Publisher
Degree
Advisors
License
Attribution 4.0 International
License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Research Projects
Organizational Units
Journal Issue
Embargo Lift Date
2025-05-17