Copyright
©The Author(s) 2015. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
Importance of microenvironment in preclinical models of breast and prostate cancer
Maija Valta, Johanna Tuomela, Department of Cell Biology and Anatomy, Institute of Biomedicine, University of Turku, 20520 Turku, Finland
Maija Valta, Division of Medicine, Turku University Hospital and University of Turku, 20520 Turku, Finland
Katja Fagerlund, Mari Suominen, Jussi Halleen, Johanna Tuomela, Pharmatest Services Ltd, Itäinen Pitkäkatu 4 C, 20520 Turku, Finland
Author contributions: Valta M, Fagerlund K, Suominen M, Halleen J and Tuomela J wrote the paper and they all meet the conditions 1, 2 and 3 proposed by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors.
Supported by Eurostars program of Eureka (project acronym “D-SIST”).
Conflict-of-interest: No potential conflicts of interest relevant to this article were reported.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Johanna Tuomela, PhD, Adjunct Professor, Department of Cell Biology and Anatomy, Institute of Biomedicine, University of Turku, Kiinamyllynkatu 10, 20520 Turku, Finland. jomitu@utu.fi
Telephone: +358-50-4352677 Fax: +358-2-2784710
Received: August 31, 2014
Peer-review started: September 3, 2014
First decision: October 14, 2014
Revised: November 18, 2014
Accepted: January 15, 2015
Article in press: January 19, 2015
Published online: March 9, 2015
Processing time: 193 Days and 16.5 Hours
Peer-review started: September 3, 2014
First decision: October 14, 2014
Revised: November 18, 2014
Accepted: January 15, 2015
Article in press: January 19, 2015
Published online: March 9, 2015
Processing time: 193 Days and 16.5 Hours
Core Tip
Core tip: It is today a recognized major problem in cancer drug development that the vast majority of drugs entering clinical trials fail to reach the market due to poor efficacy. One important reason for this is the wide use of subcutaneous xenograft models that are cheap, fast and easy to perform, but lack tumor microenvironment. Concentrating on breast and prostate cancer, we explain why the presence of tumor microenvironment is important, and describe different types of preclinical efficacy models that incorporate tumor microenvironment. We state the importance of using these models to reduce the high failure rates in clinical trials.