Context
Epithelial-stromal interactions are thought to be important not only in normal cellular proliferation, differentiation and tissue morphogenesis but also in tumour development and progression. To study intercellular communication between specific cell types the authors established a three-dimensional model to analyse the effects of fibroblasts and human umbilical endothelial cells on the growth and morphogenesis of the normal MCF10A breast epithelial cell line and its preneoplastic derivative, the MCF10AT1-EIII8 (EIII8) cell line.