Project description:Gene expression analysis of Rhabdomyosarcoma patient biopsies and their Patient derived xenograft tissues. Transcriptimic and Functional analysis correlated with in vivo Ipatasertib efficacy. PRKG1 mRNA levels in Rhabdomyosarcoma biopsies and PDX.
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.
Project description:There is a strong need to develop patient-derived xenograft (PDX) tumor models for studying new treatment options for gastric cancer (GC). With low engraftment success, few collections of GC PDX have been reported and molecular basis of the model establishment remain largely unknown. Here we established n=27 PDX models from n=100 GC tumors and compared their characteristics to GC patient tumors based on the recent work done by ACRG and TCGA, to evaluate the representativeness and relevance of the collection for drug testing. We show that MSI, CIN and MSS/TP53- tumors were preferentially established as PDX, while MSS/EMT and EBV not and that PDX models retained histology and molecular subtypes of parental tumors. By using synapse database, we identified 48 druggable alterations that could be investigated with the collection. Counting alterations for these 48 genes in PDX compared to TCGA tumors revealed models frequently classified with heavily altered tumors but well preserved genomic alteration patterns specific of each GC subtype. The molecular analysis of n=8/27 tumors and corresponding PDX at passage P1, P2 and P3 revealed variations in somatic alteration content both at single nucleotide and chromosomal level in highly unstable MSI and CIN tumors, with changes occurring mainly at P1. In two cases, we show likely emergence of rare subclones carrying known oncogenic alterations in KRAS and PIK3CA. Significance. This study presents a resource of fully annotated GC PDX models for anticancer agent testing. We show that beside close resemblance of PDX with parental tumors, not all subtypes are established, and that the clonal selection plays a key role the establishment of certain tumors. This may have a bearing on translation of observations into the clinic and underline the need to frequently survey the molecular characteristics of the PDX models.
Project description:Genomic profiling of human squamous cell carcinoma cell lines cells and corresponding primary tumors Descriptive experiment, studying DNA copy number alterations in 6 newly established human squamous cell carcinoma cell lines cells and corresponding 6 primary tumors.
Project description:Primary tumors of Renal Cell Carcinoma (RCC) were implanted orthotopically into mice and their gene expression profiling was compared to their corresponding tumors using Affymetrix Human Genome U133 Plus 2.0 arrays.