An Engineered 3D Co-culture Model of Primary Macrophages and Patient-Derived Tumour Cells to Explore Cellular Responses in the Graded Hypoxic Microenvironment of Pancreatic Cancer

In pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC), tumour associated macrophages (TAMs) are a heterogeneous immune cell population that interact with cancer cells to promote malignancy, chemo-resistance, and immunosuppression. Aside from TAMs, hypoxia is a prominent feature of PDAC that can rewire cells to survive and enhance malignancy in the tumour microenvironment (TME). Deciphering the interactions between macrophages, cancer cells and hypoxia could lead to the development of effective immune-targeted therapies for PDAC. However, there are only a few models that physiologically recapitulate the PDAC TME and allow for meaningful interrogation of cancer-immune cell interactions in hypoxia. Here, we develop a model of primary macrophages and PDAC patient organoid-derived cells by adapting TRACER, a paper-based, engineered 3D model that allows snapshot analysis of cellular response in hypoxia. In this study, we establish a direct co-culture method of primary macrophages and PDAC organoid cells in TRACER and demonstrate that TRACER co-cultures generate hypoxic gradients and show expected phenotypic responses to this hypoxic gradient. Moreover, we report for the first time in a human in vitro model that hypoxic macrophages exert a graded chemoprotective effect on gemcitabine-treated PDAC organoid cells, and that interactions between cancer cells and macrophages from the inner layers of TRACER indirectly attenuate the inflammatory response of donor-derived T-cells. Overall, the TRACER co-culture system is a novel, fully human 3D in vitro cancer-immune model for evaluating the response of macrophages and cancer cells in a hypoxic gradient.