Trophoblast differentiation during formation of anchoring villi in a model of the early human placenta in vitro

Quantifying trophoblast migration: In vitro approaches to address in vivo situations

“…In some instances, co-culture models have been advanced even further toward the in vivo scenario by culturing trophoblasts with segments of uterine spiral arteries 45 or culturing placental villous explants with decidual tissue. 46,47 Different cell types can be distinguished either by immunohistochemistry at the end of the culture period, or pre-labeling with fluorescent tracker dyes. In 2D cultures, fluorescent labeling has the advantage of allowing migration to be monitored in real-time by fluorescent time-lapse microscopy, from which the speed and direction of both cell populations, and the influence of co-culture on these parameters, can be quantified.…”

Adhesion Molecules in Human Trophoblast – A Review. II. Extravillous Trophoblast

“…Functional studies examining the role of integrins in mediating invasion of primary cytotrophoblasts (CTB) through a basement membrane-like matrix (Matrigel) and interstitial collagen have demonstrated the importance of αvβ3 and α1β1 in promoting migration and of α5β1 in anchorage [5,6,8,12]. Function-blocking antibodies raised against β1 disturb 40 anchorage and reduce column outgrowth when applied to villous explants, and shift the balance of interactions away from cell-matrix and towards cell-cell adhesion [8].…”

“…Cells in the columns upregulate the fibronectin receptor integrin α5β1 [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11], the fibronectin, VCAM-1 and EMILIN-1 receptor α4β1 [12], αVβ3 [12], which binds fibronectin and other RGD-containing ligands in extracellular matrix (ECM), the laminin/collagen receptor α1β1 and the laminin receptor α6β1. They exhibit a reciprocal loss 35 of expression of the laminin receptor α6β4 [4,6,[13][14][15][16].…”

Adhesion molecules in implantation

“…4a). Some of the molecules involved are well recognized, while understanding of the underlying regulatory mechanisms is lacking (Aplin, 1991(Aplin, , 1996Vićovac et al, 1995). The villous cytotrophoblast layer expresses the α6 and β4 integrin subunits ( Fig.…”