Assessing The Phenotypic Change of Fibroblasts and Colorectal Cancer Cells under Conditioned Media Incubation

Tumor progression is often mediated by stroma cells, such as fibroblasts, which have diverse origins and different activation stages. While roles of fibroblast in the tumor microenvironment have been studied, their interactions with cancer cells remain unclear in colorectal cancer, a common cancer worldwide. In this study, we evaluate the reciprocal effects of fibroblasts and colorectal cancer cells through incubation with conditioned media derived from each other. We assess the effect of conditioned media on specific cancer biomarkers and essential functions including metabolism, proliferation, and migration. Our results show that co-culturing naive fibroblasts and colon tumor cells with different starting ratios leads to localization and proliferation changes in 3D culture. Moreover, conditioned media from cancer cells drove naive fibroblasts to higher vimentin expression. Furthermore, our findings suggest that colorectal-cancer-cells-derived conditioned media and fibroblast-derived conditioned media promote and inhibit cell proliferation, respectively, while both limit cellular metabolism. Overall, our study provides insight into the crosstalk between tumor cells and naive fibroblasts, which contributes to the initiation of the tumor microenvironment and cancer progression.