What is it about?
Tumours create challenging environments for the cells living within them, including low extracellular pH caused by altered metabolism. We investigated how acute exposure to acidic conditions affected two different tumour cell lines — breast carcinoma MCF-7 cells and oesophageal squamous cell carcinoma WHCO6 cells. We examined changes in cell survival, apoptosis, cell-cycle progression and the secretion of cytokines, chemokines and growth factors that can influence the tumour microenvironment.
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Why is it important?
Acidic conditions do not affect all tumour cells in the same way. While very low pH increased cell death, the two cell lines showed distinct responses to moderate acidity. WHCO6 cells were better able to survive moderate acid exposure, while factors released into the surrounding medium after acid treatment subsequently increased viability and proliferation of WHCO6 cells but promoted further cell death in MCF-7 cells. These findings highlight how tumour cells can differ in their ability to adapt to the microenvironment and how signals released by stressed or dying cells may influence neighbouring tumour cells.
Perspectives
The tumour microenvironment is not simply a passive consequence of tumour growth. Conditions such as acidity can influence tumour-cell survival, proliferation and communication with surrounding cells, potentially contributing to differences between tumour types. Understanding these interactions may help identify vulnerabilities that could be targeted therapeutically. The findings also highlight the importance of considering tumour-specific responses when investigating the effects of the microenvironment and developing strategies to modify it.
Dr Catherine Worsley
University of Pretoria
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: The effect of acute acid exposure on immunomodulatory protein secretion, cell survival, and cell cycle progression in tumour cell lines, Cytokine, February 2023, Elsevier,
DOI: 10.1016/j.cyto.2022.156118.
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Resources
Dataset of cell viability and analytes released by cancer cell lines exposed to low pH and conditioned medium
This contains details of the experimental dataset
Inducing apoptosis using chemical treatment and acidic pH, and detecting it using the Annexin V flow cytometric assay
This is the lab protocol established for the experimental work
Contributors
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