The team's multiphoton microscopy captured this effect. They treated the mice with the bisphosphonate zoledronic acid and found that the drug did not reduce the number of osteoclasts, but slowed their activity, preserving bone. Notably, the treatment had no effect on tumor growth, and this explains why the bone is stabilized but patient survival is not prolonged.

Friedl's lab is using this model to study cancer treatments in mice, including co-clinical work in immunotherapy and radiation. Drugs that free the immune system to attack cancer are often thwarted by resistance factors in the tumor microenvironment, which the team hopes to observe and characterize.

Friedl holds joint appointments at Radboud University Nijmegen in Nijmegen, Netherlands, and The Cancer Genomics Centre, Utrecht, Netherlands.

Co-authors with Friedl and Dondossola are Stephanie Alexander, Ph.D., Stefano Filippini, Michael Starbuck, Nora Navone, M.D., Ph.D., and Christopher Logothetis, M.D., David H. Koch Center for Applied Research off Genitourinary Cancers and department of Genitourinary Medical Oncology at MD Anderson; Boris Holzapfel, M.D., Ph.D., Elena M. De-Juan-Pardo, Ph.D., and Hutmacher of the Centre in Regenerative Medicine, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia; and Robert Hoffman, Ph.D., of the University of California, San Diego.

This research was funded by MD Anderson's Moon Shots Program™ through the Prostate Cancer Moon Shot™, MD Anderson's cancer center support grant from the National Cancer Institute (P30 CA016672) and grants from the NCI (U54 CA210184-01), the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas, the Prostate Cancer Foundation, The Rolanette and Berdon Lawrence Bone Disease Program of Texas; and NWO-VICI, the European Research Council, the Australian Research Council Training Centre in Additive Biomanufacturing, National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia, National Breast Cancer Foundation, and World Cancer Foundation.

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