A scaffold platform for sinonasal cancers: In-depth tumor understanding therapy for personalized therapy

Sinonasal cancers are rare tumors that account for 3% of all cancers of head and neck district, with prevalence in some geographical areas [e.g., China, Japan, Italy (Tuscany and Eastern Piedmont)], and are associated to specific job categories, like carpentry and tannery. Diverse tissues can be affected, including epithelia, glands, bone, cartilage and olfactory nerve, as the anatomy of nasal sinuses is very complex. Being rare and diversified in more than 200 subtypes, much is still to be understood to treat those tumors in a personalized manner. The goal of this work is to create a platform of scaffolds able to reproduce 3D models of selected sinonasal cancers. We developed 3 different scaffold types, all based on polyhydroxybutyrate (PHB and PHBV) to mimic three tissues affected by sinonasal cancers, i.e., squamous epithelium (melanoma), mucous epithelium (intestinal‐type adenocarcinoma; ITAC) and bone (osteosarcoma). By studying quaternary polymer‐ solvent systems, we obtained and characterized collagen/PHBV (50/50 w/w%) and chitosan/PHBV (5/95 w/w%) electrospun scaffolds for epithelial tissues, and nano‐BaTiO3/PHB (5/95 w/w%) 3D printed scaffold for bone. We cultured tumor cell lines representative of the selected tumors and their normal counterparts and characterized the obtained 3D models according to cell viability and morphology. We isolated 10 cell lines derived from patients affected by sinonasal tumors, including ITAC, melanoma, and sinonasal undifferentiated carcinoma (SNUC), and tested our scaffold platform with primary cells of melanoma and ITAC, demonstrating that it can replicate the morphologic and genetic features of those sinonasal tumors.