Project description:Neuroblastoma, the most common extracranial pediatric solid tumor, is responsible for 15% of all childhood cancer deaths. Patients frequently present at diagnosis with metastatic disease, particularly to the bone marrow. Advances in therapy and understanding of the metastatic process have been limited due in part, to the lack of animal models harboring bone marrow disease. The widely employed transgenic model, the TH-MYCN mouse, exhibits limited metastasis to this site. Here we establish the first genetic immunocompetent mouse model for metastatic neuroblastoma with enhanced secondary tumors in the bone marrow. This model recapitulates two frequent alterations in metastatic neuroblasoma, over-expression of MYCN and loss of caspase-8 expression. In this model, the mouse caspase-8 gene was deleted in neural crest lineage cells by crossing a TH-Cre transgenic mouse with a caspase-8 conditional knockout mouse. This mouse was then crossed with the neuroblastoma prone TH-MYCN mouse. While over-expression of MYCN by itself rarely caused bone marrow metastasis (5% average incidence), combining MYCN overexpression and caspase-8 deletion significantly increased bone marrow metastasis (37% average incidence). Loss of caspase-8 expression did not alter the site, incidence, or latency of the primary tumors. However, secondary tumors were detected in the bone marrow of these mice as early as week 9-10. The mouse model described in this work is a valuable tool to enhance our understanding of metastatic neuroblastoma and treatment options and underscores the role of caspase-8 in neuroblastoma progression. Survey of spontateous 24 NB tumors and 5 bone marrow samples in wt and transgenic mice.
Project description:Neuroblastoma, the most common extracranial pediatric solid tumor, is responsible for 15% of all childhood cancer deaths. Patients frequently present at diagnosis with metastatic disease, particularly to the bone marrow. Advances in therapy and understanding of the metastatic process have been limited due in part, to the lack of animal models harboring bone marrow disease. The widely employed transgenic model, the TH-MYCN mouse, exhibits limited metastasis to this site. Here we establish the first genetic immunocompetent mouse model for metastatic neuroblastoma with enhanced secondary tumors in the bone marrow. This model recapitulates two frequent alterations in metastatic neuroblasoma, over-expression of MYCN and loss of caspase-8 expression. In this model, the mouse caspase-8 gene was deleted in neural crest lineage cells by crossing a TH-Cre transgenic mouse with a caspase-8 conditional knockout mouse. This mouse was then crossed with the neuroblastoma prone TH-MYCN mouse. While over-expression of MYCN by itself rarely caused bone marrow metastasis (5% average incidence), combining MYCN overexpression and caspase-8 deletion significantly increased bone marrow metastasis (37% average incidence). Loss of caspase-8 expression did not alter the site, incidence, or latency of the primary tumors. However, secondary tumors were detected in the bone marrow of these mice as early as week 9-10. The mouse model described in this work is a valuable tool to enhance our understanding of metastatic neuroblastoma and treatment options and underscores the role of caspase-8 in neuroblastoma progression. Survey of spontateous 13 NB tumors in wt and transgenic mice
Project description:Neuroblastoma, the most common extracranial pediatric solid tumor, is responsible for 15% of all childhood cancer deaths. Patients frequently present at diagnosis with metastatic disease, particularly to the bone marrow. Advances in therapy and understanding of the metastatic process have been limited due in part, to the lack of animal models harboring bone marrow disease. The widely employed transgenic model, the TH-MYCN mouse, exhibits limited metastasis to this site. Here we establish the first genetic immunocompetent mouse model for metastatic neuroblastoma with enhanced secondary tumors in the bone marrow. This model recapitulates two frequent alterations in metastatic neuroblasoma, over-expression of MYCN and loss of caspase-8 expression. In this model, the mouse caspase-8 gene was deleted in neural crest lineage cells by crossing a TH-Cre transgenic mouse with a caspase-8 conditional knockout mouse. This mouse was then crossed with the neuroblastoma prone TH-MYCN mouse. While over-expression of MYCN by itself rarely caused bone marrow metastasis (5% average incidence), combining MYCN overexpression and caspase-8 deletion significantly increased bone marrow metastasis (37% average incidence). Loss of caspase-8 expression did not alter the site, incidence, or latency of the primary tumors. However, secondary tumors were detected in the bone marrow of these mice as early as week 9-10. The mouse model described in this work is a valuable tool to enhance our understanding of metastatic neuroblastoma and treatment options and underscores the role of caspase-8 in neuroblastoma progression.
Project description:Neuroblastoma, the most common extracranial pediatric solid tumor, is responsible for 15% of all childhood cancer deaths. Patients frequently present at diagnosis with metastatic disease, particularly to the bone marrow. Advances in therapy and understanding of the metastatic process have been limited due in part, to the lack of animal models harboring bone marrow disease. The widely employed transgenic model, the TH-MYCN mouse, exhibits limited metastasis to this site. Here we establish the first genetic immunocompetent mouse model for metastatic neuroblastoma with enhanced secondary tumors in the bone marrow. This model recapitulates two frequent alterations in metastatic neuroblasoma, over-expression of MYCN and loss of caspase-8 expression. In this model, the mouse caspase-8 gene was deleted in neural crest lineage cells by crossing a TH-Cre transgenic mouse with a caspase-8 conditional knockout mouse. This mouse was then crossed with the neuroblastoma prone TH-MYCN mouse. While over-expression of MYCN by itself rarely caused bone marrow metastasis (5% average incidence), combining MYCN overexpression and caspase-8 deletion significantly increased bone marrow metastasis (37% average incidence). Loss of caspase-8 expression did not alter the site, incidence, or latency of the primary tumors. However, secondary tumors were detected in the bone marrow of these mice as early as week 9-10. The mouse model described in this work is a valuable tool to enhance our understanding of metastatic neuroblastoma and treatment options and underscores the role of caspase-8 in neuroblastoma progression.
Project description:It has been already reported that there are undifferentiated/proliferating neuroblasts in the postnatal sympathetic ganglia in TH-MYCN mice, a neuroblastoma model. We established suitable spheroid culture condition that selectively isolates undifferentiated neuroblasts from superior mesenteric ganligon (SMG) of TH-MYCN mice. In order to investigate the chromosomal alterations (gains or losses) of spheres derived from TH-MYCN mice, we carried out array comparative genomic hybridization. We investigated whether chromosomal alterations occured during early neuroblastoma tumorigenesis in TH-MYCN mice.
Project description:The project used next generation sequencing for RNA-seq analysis, to identify transcriptome changes associated with tumorigenesis in two different caspase-2 knockout mice models. We describe key changes in both lymphoma and neuroblastoma associated genes in the two tumor types that may contribute to tumor outcome following loss of Casp2. We identified a panel of genes with altered expression in Th-MYCN/Casp2-/- tumors, that are strongly associated with neuroblastoma outcome, and which have roles in melanogenesis, Wnt and Hippo pathway signaling, that also contribute to neuronal differentiation. In addition, we found that key changes in gene expression in the EμMyc/Casp2-/- tumors, are associated with increased immune signaling and suggest that Casp2 deficiency augments immune signaling pathways that may be in turn, enhance lymphomagenesis. Overall, our study has identified new genes and pathways that contribute to the caspase-2 tumor suppressor function and highlight distinct roles for caspase-2 in different tissues.
Project description:Here we characterize and optimize both systems to increase their utility for preclinical studies. We show that TH-MYCN mice develop tumors in the paraspinal ganglia, but not in the adrenal, with cellular and gene expression patterns similar to human NB. In addition, we present a new ultrasound guided, non-invasive orthotopic xenograft method. This injection technique is rapid, provides accurate targeting of the injected cells and leads to efficient engraftment. We also demonstrate that tumors can be detected, monitored and quantified prior to visualization using ultrasound, MRI and bioluminescence. Finally we develop and test a “standard of care” chemotherapy regimen. This protocol, which is based on current treatments for neuroblastoma, provides a baseline for comparison of new therapeutic agents. A total of 17 samples are provided reprsenting TH-MYCN tumors derived from mice
Project description:To understand the in vivo transcriptomic response to ATR inhibition, RNA-Seq was performed after treatment of 2 previously developed neuroblastoma mouse models (Alk-F1178S;Th-MYCN and Rosa26_Alkal2;Th-MYCN; see Borenas et al., EMBO J, 2021) with the ATR inhibitor BAY 1895344.