In addition, targeting the genetically

more stable stromal cells of the tumor microenvironment offers the potential for reduced likelihood of drug resistance. Poster No. 222 Impact of this website Extracellular Matrix Composition on Drug Diffusion and Efficacy Tiziana Triulzi 1 , Gaia Ghedini1, Patrizia Casalini1, Cristina Ghirelli1, Elda Tagliabue1 1 Department of Experimental Oncology, Fondazione IRCCS, Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori, Milano, Italy By microarray supervised analysis on a dataset obtained from breast carcinoma patients treated with docetaxel as neoadjuvant therapy, the foremost variable identified has been SerpinB5, a serine-protease-inhibitor, using disease-progression as supervised variable. SerpinB5 resulted 13 times more expressed

in non-responsive in comparison to responsive tumors (p < 0.0001). Real Time PCR on 30 core biopsies from patients treated in our Institute with neoadjuvant Selleckchem PD-1/PD-L1 Inhibitor 3 therapy, revealed 3 times higher SerpinB5 expression in non-responder patients in comparison to responders (p = 0.002). To understand the role of SerpinB5 in response to therapy we infected breast carcinoma cells MCF7 with SerpinB5 (MCF7-Ser). Tumors from nude mice xenografted with MCF7-Ser presented reorganized accumulation of collagen fibers. Immunofluorescence analysis by confocal microscopy showed a dramatically decreased localization of doxorubicin (DXR) Methane monooxygenase within tumors from MCF7-Ser in comparison to mock cells, suggesting that IPI-549 concentration resistance to chemotherapy in patients with SerpinB5 overexpressing breast carcinomas could derive from less drug diffusion. To investigate the importance of extracellular matrix amount in drug diffusion and efficacy, we injected HER-2-overexpressing cancer cells in nude mice, mixed or not with Matrigel. Matrigel-mixed tumors resulted significantly (p < 0.01) more resistant to DXR and showed lower apoptosis levels compared to those without Matrigel. Analysis by imaging mass spectrometry

and immunofluorescence revealed lower uptake of DXR, confirming that dense matrix could be responsible for tumor chemoresistance through drug diffusion inhibition. Using hydrophilic liposome based DXR formulation, DXR has been detected also in Matrigel-mixed tumors, suggesting that the less free drug diffusion could be due to its physical-chemical properties. Accordingly treatment with hydrophilic-drug Trastuzumab resulted more effective in tumors from Matrigel-mixed cells and the presence of the bio-drug, analyzed by immunofluorescence and radioimmune localization assay, was higher in tumor cells surrounded by dense extracellular matrix. In conclusion extracellular matrix accumulation impacts drug diffusion according to drug physical properties. Partially supported by a grant from AIRC) Poster No.