Human ossicles consist of fully mature bone and bone marrow structures establishing a complex human mesenchymal niche with retained stem cell properties. With the generation of a dedicated human mesenchymal cell line, the MSOD-B, already over 1500 ossicles have been formed. The established niche can support robust engraftment of patient cancer cells, which are typically hardly developing in mice. Thus, the mini-bone model will help elucidating the interactions of bone-developing cancers with the bone marrow niche.
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