eLetters is an online forum for ongoing peer review. Submission of eLetters are open to all. Please read our Terms of Service before submitting your own eLetter.
- RE: Comment on “Intravital microscopy of osteolytic progression and therapy response of cancer lesions in the bone”
Dear editor,
We read with great interest the recent publication by Eleonora Dondossola and colleagues [1] who development very ingenious new methods for the study of osteolytic progression and therapy response of cancer lesions in the bone. To this end, authors combined a tissues-engineered mature micro-ossicle with skin windows-based intravital multiphoton microcopy (iMPM) to provide a new strategy for longitudinal analysis of tumor cells interaction with bone environment, as well as for the study of cancer associated-osteolysis and/or therapy response.
In our opinion, the approaches proposed in this study [1] can drastically change the current knowledge about the biology of bone metastasis, mainly from epithelial cancers, opening interesting prospective for the development of specific new anti-metastatic drugs capable to prevent or block this pathological process. In fact, despite the numerous investigations about the molecular mechanisms involved in the formation of osteolytic bone lesions, efficient therapies have not yet been developed. The therapeutic strategies currently available are able to induce bone pain palliation rather than enhanced survival [2]. Thus, the management of patients affected by bone metastatic lesions represent one of the most important healthcare issue in worldwide. As mentioned by Dondossola et al. [1], the more frequent epithelial lesions that develop bone metastasis are breast and prostate cancers.
Breast cancer tumors d...
Show MoreCompeting Interests: None declared.