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Transcriptional dissection of pancreatic tumors engrafted in mice

ABSTRACT: Engraftment of primary pancreas ductal adenocarcinomas (PDAC) in mice to generate patient derived xenograft (PDX) models is a promising platform to for biological and therapeutic studies in this disease. However, these models are still incompletely characterized. Here, we measured the impact of the murine environment on the gene expression of the engrafted human tumoral cells. We have analyzed gene expression profiles from 35 new PDX models and compared them with previously published microarray data from PDAC and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Our results showed that PDX models derived from PDAC, or HCC, were clearly different to the cell lines derived from the same cancer tissues. Indeed, PDAC- and HCC-derived cell lines are indistinguishable one from the other based in their gene expression profiles. In contrast, the transcriptomes of PDAC and HCC PDX models are clearly different and more similar to their original tumor than to PDX models from the other tumor type. Interestingly, the main differences between pancreatic PDX models and human PDAC is the expression of genes involved in pathways related with extracellular matrix interactions and cell cycle regulation likely reflecting the adaptations of the tumors to the new environment. Furthermore, most of these differences are detected in the first passages after the tumor engraftment, indicating early phases of the adaptation process. In conclusion, different from conventional cancer cell lines, PDX models of PDAC retain similar gene expression profiles of PDAC. Expression changes are mainly related to genes involved in stromal pathways likely reflecting the adaptation to new environments. We also provide evidence of the stability of gene expression patterns over subsequent passages.

ORGANISM(S): Homo sapiens

PROVIDER: GSE51798 | GEO | 2014/04/22

SECONDARY ACCESSION(S): PRJNA225666

REPOSITORIES: GEO

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Project description:Engraftment of primary pancreas ductal adenocarcinomas (PDAC) in mice to generate patient derived xenograft (PDX) models is a promising platform to for biological and therapeutic studies in this disease. However, these models are still incompletely characterized. Here, we measured the impact of the murine environment on the gene expression of the engrafted human tumoral cells. We have analyzed gene expression profiles from 35 new PDX models and compared them with previously published microarray data from PDAC and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Our results showed that PDX models derived from PDAC, or HCC, were clearly different to the cell lines derived from the same cancer tissues. Indeed, PDAC- and HCC-derived cell lines are indistinguishable one from the other based in their gene expression profiles. In contrast, the transcriptomes of PDAC and HCC PDX models are clearly different and more similar to their original tumor than to PDX models from the other tumor type. Interestingly, the main differences between pancreatic PDX models and human PDAC is the expression of genes involved in pathways related with extracellular matrix interactions and cell cycle regulation likely reflecting the adaptations of the tumors to the new environment. Furthermore, most of these differences are detected in the first passages after the tumor engraftment, indicating early phases of the adaptation process. In conclusion, different from conventional cancer cell lines, PDX models of PDAC retain similar gene expression profiles of PDAC. Expression changes are mainly related to genes involved in stromal pathways likely reflecting the adaptation to new environments. We also provide evidence of the stability of gene expression patterns over subsequent passages. We have analyzed gene expression profiles from 35 new PDX models and compared them with previously published in GEO microarray data. We used PDX models, primary tumors and cell lines from PDAC and hepatocellular carcinoma. All these public data were re-process in order to compare with our 35 samples

Project description:Osteosarcoma (OS) and Ewing’s sarcoma (EW) are the two most common pediatric solid tumors, after brain tumors. Multimodal treatments have significantly improved prognosis in localized disease but outcome is still poor in metastatic patients, for whom therapeutic options are often inadequate. Preclinical drug testing to identify promising treatment options that match the molecular make-up of these tumors is hampered by the lack of appropriate and molecularly well-characterized patient-derived models. To address this need, a panel of patient-derived xenografts (PDX) was established by subcutaneous implantation of fresh, surgically resected OS and EW tumors in NSG mice. Tumors were re-transplanted to next mice generations and fragments were collected for histopathological and molecular characterization. A model was considered established after observing stable histological and molecular features for at least three passages. To evaluate the similarity of the model with primary tumor, we performed a global gene expression profiling and tissue microarrays (TMA), to assess tumor specific biomarkers on tissues from OS/EW tumors and their PDXs (1st and 3rd passage). Moreover, we verified the feasibility of these models for preclinical drug testing. We implanted 61 OS and 29 EW samples: 14/38 (37%) primary OS and 9/23 (39%) OS lung metastases successfully engrafted; while among EW, 5/26 (19%) primary samples and 1/3 (33%) metastases were established. Comparison between patient samples and PDXs, highlighted that histology and genetic characteristics of PDXs were stable and maintained over passages. In particular, correlative analysis between OS and EW samples and their PDXs was extremely high (Pearson’s r range r=0.94-0.96), while patient-derived primary cultures displayed reduced correlation with human samples (r=0.90-0.93), indicating that in vitro adaptation superimpose molecular alterations that create genetic diversion from original tumors. No significant differentially expressed gene profile was observed from the comparison between EW samples and PDXs (fold change > 2, adjusted p <0.05 at paired t-test). In OS, the comparison between OS patient-derived tumors and PDX indicated differences in 397 genes, mostly belonging to immune system functional category. This is in line with the idea that human immune cells are gradually replaced by murine counterparts upon engraftment in the mouse. As proof-of concept, two EW PDX and one OS PDX have been treated with conventional and innovated drugs to test their value in terms of drug-sensitivity prediction. Overall, our study indicated that PDX models maintained the histological and genetic markers of the tumor samples and represent reliable models to test sensitivity to novel drug associations.

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Transcriptional dissection of pancreatic tumors engrafted in mice

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