It has been increasingly demonstrated that the tumor microenvironment plays an active role in neoplasia growth and metastasis. Through
different pathways, tumor cells can efficiently recruit stromal, immune and endothelial cells by secreting stimulatory factors, chemokines and
cytokines. In turn, these cells can alter the signaling properties of the microenvironment by releasing growth-promoting signals, metabolites
and extracellular matrix components to sustain high proliferation and metastatic competence. In this context, we identify that the complement
component C1q, highly expressed locally by a range of human malignant tumors, upon interacting with the extracellular matrix hyaluronic acid,
strongly affects the behavior of primary cells isolated from human tumor specimens. Here, we describe a method to test how C1q bound to
hyaluronic acid (HA) impacts tumor cell adhesion, underlying the fact that the biological properties of key components of the extracellular matrix
(in this case HA) can be shaped by bioactive signals toward tumor progression.
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