Abstract

The tumor microenvironment plays animportant role in the progression of cancer. This study focused oncarcinoma-associated fibroblasts (CAFs) and stromal-epithelial interactionbetween CAFs and epithelial ovarian carcinoma (EOC) cells. We isolated andestablished primary cultures of CAFs and co-cultured CAFs and EOC cells invitro. The co-culture conditioned medium (CC-CM) was harvested and itsinfluence on EOC cells was examined. Cytokine, chemokine, and growth factorlevels were screened using a biotin label-based human antibody array system. Wefound that the stromal-epithelial crosstalk provided a suitablemicroenvironment for the progression of ovarian cancer cells in vitro.