Abstract 642: Hypoxia-regulated gene expression explains differences between cell line-derived xenografts and patient-derived xenografts

Abstract

Cell line-derived xenografts (CDXs) are an integral part of drug efficacy testing during development of new pharmaceuticals against cancer but their accuracy in predicting clinical responses in patients have been debated. Patient-derived xenografts (PDXs) are thought to be more useful for predictive biomarker identification for targeted therapies, including metastatic melanoma, due to their similarities to human disease. Here, tumor biopsies from patients and ten widely-used melanoma cell lines were transplanted into immunocompromised mice to generate PDXs and CDXs, respectively. Gene expression profiles generated from the tumors of these PDXs and CDXs clustered into distinct groups, despite similar mutational signatures. Hypoxia-induced gene signatures and overexpression of the hypoxia-regulated miRNA hsa-miR-210 characterized CDXs. Inhibition of hsa-miR-210 with decoys had little phenotypic effect in vitro but resulted in reduced sensitivity to MEK1/2 inhibition in vivo, suggesting down-regulation of this miRNA could result in development of resistance to MEK inhibitors. Citation Format: Joydeep Bhadury, Berglind O. Einarsdottir, Agnieszka Podraza, Roger Olofsson Bagge, Ulrika Stierner, Lars Ny, Marcela Dávila López, Jonas A. Nilsson. Hypoxia-regulated gene expression explains differences between cell line-derived xenografts and patient-derived xenografts. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 107th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2016 Apr 16-20; New Orleans, LA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2016;76(14 Suppl):Abstract nr 642.