Bioengineering a novel 3D in-vitro model to recreate physiological oxygen levels and tumor-immune interactions

Abstract

Oxygen deprivation within tumors is one of the most prevalent causes of resilient cancer cell survival and increased immune evasion in breast cancer (BCa). Current in vitro models do not adequately mimic physiological oxygen levels relevant to breast tissue and its tumor-immune interactions. Here, we propose an approach to engineer a three-dimensional (3D) model (named 3D engineered oxygen, 3D-O) that supports growth of BCa cells and generates physio- and pathophysiological oxygen levels. Low oxygen-induced changes within the 3D-O model supported known tumor hypoxia characteristics such as reduced BCa cell proliferation, increased extracellular matrix protein expression, increased extracellular vesicle secretion and enhanced immune surface marker expression on BCa cells. We further demonstrated that low oxygen-induced changes mimicked tumor-immune interactions leading to immune evasion mechanisms. CD8+ T cell infiltration was significantly impaired under pathophysiological oxygen levels and we were able to establish that hypoxia inhibition re-sensitize BCa cells to cytotoxic CD8+ T cells. Therefore, our novel 3D-O model could serve as a promising platform for the evaluation of immunological events and as a drug-screening platform tool to overcome hypoxia-driven immune evasion.