1276 Morphologic variants of cell cannibalism in the spontaneous human melanoma-fibroblast hybrids using high-content fluorescent microscope imaging

Recently, there has been a great interest in melanoma and stromal cell-to-cell interactions behind the progressive behavior of melanoma. By vitro co-culturing using sequential seeding conditions imitating niche properties, gained hybrid variants are visualized by high content fluorescent microscopy. The co-culture experiment applied consecutive order primarily plated HDF-RFP-ZeoR fibroblast monolayer as “soil” delayed spreading UACC 257-GFP-NeoR cells “seeds”. Using only single zeocin selection provides double advantages eliminating parental preserving resistant stroma to elongate lifespan rare cells. observed heterotypic underwent detailed morphological analysis classification vitro, followed ex vivocharacterization human tissue samples. morphology identified included cell internalization, living cell-in-cell structures, intermediate hybrids, transient definitive myofibroblast-like or resting fibroblast-like variants. melanoma-fibroblast classified mainly defensive cancer cannibalism cells, which may result paradoxical fusion showing melanoma-to-stromal mimicry. resulted hybrids phenotype indistinguishable from surrounding study strengthens complexity cancer-stromal providing new fields on histopathologic diagnostics well cancer-microenvironment research.