Poster Presentation 32nd Lorne Cancer 2020

High resolution confocal imaging to study breast cancer metastatic niche in the bone marrow (#386)

Raymond Yip 1 2 , Bianca Capaldo 1 2 , Francois Vaillant 1 2 , Yunshun Chen 1 2 , Bhupinder Pal 1 3 , Robin Anderson 4 , Gordon Smyth 1 5 , Geoffrey Lindeman 1 6 7 , Edwin Hawkins 1 2 , Jane Visvader 1 2
  1. The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, Parkville, VIC, Australia
  2. Department of Medical Biology, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC, Australia
  3. Single Cell Cancer Genomics Laboratory, Olivia Newton-John Cancer Wellness and Research Centre, Heidelberg, VIC, Australia
  4. Translational Breast Cancer Program, Olivia Newton-John Cancer Wellness and Research Centre, Heidelberg, VIC, Australia
  5. School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC, Australia
  6. Parkville Familial Cancer Centre and Department of Medical Oncology, The Royal Melbourne Hospital and Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, Parkville, VIC, Australia
  7. Department of Medicine, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC, Australia

The skeleton is the most common site of breast cancer metastasis. Accumulating evidence indicate that breast cancer cells preferentially disseminate to a specialized niche within the bone marrow for efficient outgrowth, but the specific location of this niche remains controversial. To study the metastatic niche in situ, we established a robust and quick protocol to perform high resolution, deep imaging of mouse and human bone marrow specimens. This technique allows accurate detection of disseminated tumour cells and three-dimensional reconstruction of various bone marrow niche components for quantitative analysis. Using this technique, we identified that disseminated human and murine breast tumour cells preferentially interact with a specialized blood vessel subtype within the marrow. This pattern of breast cancer bone colonisation is independent of animal age and the route of injection. We further demonstrated that depletion of this vessel subtype in aged mice markedly reduced bone metastasis burden in both intracardiac and spontaneous metastasis models. Together, our work proposes that breast tumour cells utilize a unique blood vessel subtype to invade the bone marrow and a targeted approach to modulate these vessels may represent new strategy to control bone metastases.