Abstract
Mammary epithelial ducts, the main functional compartment of the mammary gland, are embedded in an adipocyte-rich stroma, which is essential for proper mammary gland development, function, and tissue homeostasis. Moreover, the adipocyte compartment has an important role in cancer progression. To better understand cell-to-cell interactions and the role of the adipocytes in the mammary gland, development of proper in vitro models which realistically mimic in vivo conditions has been essential. In this chapter, we describe a simple and effective method for generating mammary gland adipocytes from mammary fibroblasts and their subsequent co-culture with mammary epithelial organoids to further investigate the role of adipocytes in epithelial development and morphogenesis.
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Acknowledgments
This work was supported by grants from the Grant Agency of Masaryk University (MUNI/G/1775/2020 to Z.S.K. and MUNI/A/1398/2021) and from the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic (MEYS CR; grant no. ERC CZ LL2323 FIBROFORCE to Z.S.K.). M.B. is a holder of the Brno PhD Talent Scholarship, funded by the Brno City Municipality. We acknowledge the core facility CELLIM of CEITEC, supported by the Czech-BioImaging large RI project (LM2023050 funded by MEYS CR), for their support with obtaining scientific data presented in this chapter.
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Brezak, M., Kubec, L., Sumbalova Koledova, Z. (2024). Differentiation of Fibroblasts to Adipocytes in 3D for a Co-culture with Mammary Organoids and Immunohistological Analysis. In: Sumbalova Koledova, Z. (eds) 3D Cell Culture. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 2764. Humana, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-0716-3674-9_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-0716-3674-9_9
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Publisher Name: Humana, New York, NY
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