Project description:Gastroenteropancreatic neuroendocrine tumors (GEP-NETs) are rare and highly heterogeneous neoplasms whose incidence has
markedly increased over the last decades. A grading system based on the tumor cells' proliferation index predicts high-risk for G3
NETs. However, low-to-intermediate grade (G1/G2) NETs have an unpredictable clinical course that varies from indolent to highly
malignant. Cultures of human cancer cells enable to perform functional perturbation analyses that are instrumental to enhance our
understanding of cancer biology. To date, no tractable and reliable long-term culture of G1/G2 NET has been reported to permit
disease modeling and pharmacological screens. Here, we report of the first long-term culture of a G2 metastatic small intestinal
NET that preserves the main genetic drivers of the tumor and retains expression patterns of the endocrine cell lineage.
Replicating the tissue, this long-term culture showed a low proliferation index, and yet it could be propagated continuously
without dramatic changes in the karyotype. The model was readily available for pharmacological screens using targeted agents
and as expected, showed low tumorigenic capacity in vivo. Overall, this is the first long-term culture of NETs to faithfully
recapitulate many aspects of the original neuroendocrine tumor.
Project description:Gastroenteropancreatic neuroendocrine tumors (GEP-NETs) are rare and highly heterogeneous neoplasms whose incidence has
markedly increased over the last decades. A grading system based on the tumor cells' proliferation index predicts high-risk for G3
NETs. However, low-to-intermediate grade (G1/G2) NETs have an unpredictable clinical course that varies from indolent to highly
malignant. Cultures of human cancer cells enable to perform functional perturbation analyses that are instrumental to enhance our
understanding of cancer biology. To date, no tractable and reliable long-term culture of G1/G2 NET has been reported to permit
disease modeling and pharmacological screens. Here, we report of the first long-term culture of a G2 metastatic small intestinal
NET that preserves the main genetic drivers of the tumor and retains expression patterns of the endocrine cell lineage.
Replicating the tissue, this long-term culture showed a low proliferation index, and yet it could be propagated continuously
without dramatic changes in the karyotype. The model was readily available for pharmacological screens using targeted agents
and as expected, showed low tumorigenic capacity in vivo. Overall, this is the first long-term culture of NETs to faithfully
recapitulate many aspects of the original neuroendocrine tumor.
Project description:Organoids retain the morphological and molecular patterns of their tissue of origin, are self-organizing, relatively simple to handle and accessible to genetic engineering. Thus, they represent an optimal tool for studying mechanisms of tissue maintenance and aging. Long-term expansion under standard growth conditions, however, is accompanied by changes in growth pattern and kinetics. As a potential explanation of these alterations, epigenetic drifts in organoid culture have been suggested. Here, we study histone tri-methylation at lysine 4 (H3K4me3) and 27 (H3K27me3) and transcriptome profiles of intestinal organoids derived from mismatch repair (MMR)-deficient and control mice and cultured for 3 and 20 weeks, and compare them with data on their tissue of origin. We find that, besides the expected changes in short-term culture, organoids show profound changes in their epigenome also during long-term culture. The most prominent are epigenetic gene activation by H3K4me3 recruitment to previously unmodified genes and by H3K27me3 loss from originally bivalent genes. We show that long-term culture is linked to broad transcriptional changes that indicate an ongoing maturation and metabolic adaptation process. This process is disturbed in MMR-deficient mice, resulting in endoplasmic reticulum (ER)-stress and Wnt-activation. Our results can be explained in terms of a mathematical model assuming that epigenetic changes during long-term culture involve DNA de-methylation that ceases if the metabolic adaptation is disturbed.
Project description:SKM-1 cells were cultured for 28 days in the absence or presence of low doses of the DNMT1 inhibitors DAC (10 nM) or AZA (100 nM). The experiment was carried in two independent set at different times, and with 2 replicates for each condition (Ctl, AZA, DAC) for a total of 12 samples. The SKM-1 cell line is derived from secondary AML arising from MDS, and is one the few representative in vitro models of MDS.