Standard in vitro co-culture conditions for studying inter-organ interactions between liver, breast cancer, and heart...

Interactions between organs are crucial for the proper functioning of the body and the maintaining of homeostasis, so their reflection in in vitro studies is necessary. These interactions occur, among other things, through secretory compounds secreted by cells that, after entering the bloodstream, affect other organs. Therefore, in vitro studies should not be limited to recreating single tissue models, such as in the form of three-dimensional structures for testing cancer therapies or disease modeling. In the present study, the focus was on reproducing organ-to-organ communication in vitro using three-dimensional cultures of liver, breast cancer and heart models. The goal was to investigate whether the metabolites produced by these models, released into the culture medium, affect the functioning of the other models. The applied approach made it possible to observe significant differences in the metabolic activity of cell aggregates, the level of glucose consumption and the expression of selected proteins.