Project description:Malignant pleural effusions (MPE) are a common complication of advanced cancers, particularly those adjacent to the pleura such as lung and breast cancer and are a frequent complication in metastatic disease. The pathophysiology of MPE formation in advanced breast cancer remains poorly understood, and their composition and biology are understudied. To characterise the phenotypic diversity of malignant pleural effusion, we performed single-cell RNA sequencing on 10 MPEs from 7 metastatic breast cancer patients with diverse molecular subtypes: two triple negative (TNBC) patients, three luminal B patients including one with a rare inflammatory subtype, and two luminal A patients. For all patients, we sequenced cells from the entire MPE, without performing any enrichment or selection, in order to ascertain the cellular composition and molecular phenotypes in an unbiased manner. Our dataset presents the first unbiased and unselected assessment of breast cancer associated MPEs at single cell resolution, providing the community with a vital resource for the study of MPEs. Our work highlights the molecular and cellular diversity captured in MPEs and advances the use of these clinically relevant biopsies both in monitoring disease progression and in the development of targeted therapeutics for patients with advanced breast cancer.
Project description:RATIONALE: Using BG00001 to insert the gene for interferon-beta into a person’s pleural cavity may improve the body’s ability to fight cancer.
PURPOSE: Phase I trial to study the effectiveness of intrapleural BG00001 in treating patients who have malignant pleural mesothelioma or malignant pleural effusions.
Project description:Soluble HLA (sHLA) molecules released to the plasma, carry their original peptide cargo and provide insight into the protein synthesis and degradation schemes of their source cells and tissues. Other body fluids, such as pleural effusions, may also contain sHLA-peptide complexes, and can potentially serve as a source of tumor antigens since these fluids are drained from the tumor microenvironment. Thus, we developed a methodology for purifying and analysing large pleural effusion sHLA class I peptidomes of patients inflicted with malignancies or benign diseases. The cleared pleural fluids, the cell pellets present in the pleural effusions, and the primary tumor cells cultured from cancer patients’ effusions, were used for immunoaffinity purification of the HLA molecules. The recovered HLA peptides were analyzed by capillary chromatography coupled to tandem mass spectrometry and the resulting LC-MS/MS data was analyzed with the MaxQuant software tool. Large HLA peptidomes were obtained by the analysis of the pleural effusions. The majority of peptides identified from the pleural effusions were defined as HLA ligands that fit the patients’ HLA consensus sequence motifs. The membranal and soluble HLA peptidomes of each individual patient were somewhat similar to each other. Many of the HLA peptides were derived from known tumor-associated antigens, lung-related proteins, and VEGF pathway proteins. Thus, the pleural effusion HLA peptidome of patients with malignant tumors can serve as a rich source of biomarkers for tumor diagnosis and personalized immunotherapy.
Project description:Briefly, we analyzed gene expression profiles in adherent cultures compared to sphere cultures from malignant pleural effusions (MPEs). MPEs could represent an opportunity to culture a wide variety of cancer cells from different donors. In this study, we set up culture conditions for cancer cells deriving from MPEs of several patients affected by the most frequent form of lung cancer, namely the subset of non small cell lung cancers (NSCLC) classified as Lung Adenocarcinomas, to show that MPEs are an excellent source of tumor initiating cells for the study of lung adenocarcinoma.
Project description:Pleural fibrosis is defined as an excessive deposition of extracellular matrix (ECM) that results in destruction of the normal pleural tissue architecture and compromised function. However there is currently no effective medication for pleural fibrosis. Understanding the detailed mechanisms of pleural fibrosis is an important unmet need which could lead to the identification of new targets for treatment of this condition. microRNAs (miRNAs) play an important role in the posttranscriptional control of gene expression. In our study, cellular fractions from TBPE contained activities capable of promoting fibrosis-like behavior in pleural mesothelial cells (PMCs), the goal of this study is to compare the exosomal miRNA composition of TBPE and TPE. We isolated exosomes from transudative pleural effusion and tuberculous pleural effusions and performed miRNA sequencing. Our study represents the first detailed analysis of exosomal miRNA composition of TBPE and TPE with biologic replicates, generated by miRNA-Seq technology.
Project description:Diagnosis of malignant pleural mesothelioma (MPM) is difficult, the most common differential diagnosis being benign pleural diseases and metastatic adenocarcinomas. In order to identify novel markers able to improve diagnostic accuracy, we performed a genome-wide gene expression analysis on tumor cells lines established from pleural effusions (13 MPM and 4 lung adenocarcinoma). Our microarray analysis led to the identification of genes encoding novel cellular and soluble markers whose expression was validated by RT-qPCR. Immunohistochemical staining of tumor biopsies with anti-type-III collagen antibodies were positive in mesothelioma cells but not in adenocarcinoma cells. Using ELISA, we showed that the C-C motif chemokine 2 (CCL2) concentration was significantly higher in pleural effusions from patients with mesothelioma (n = 61) than in subjects with adenocarcinoma (n = 25) or with benign pleural effusions (n = 15): median (interquartile range) = 2.99 ng/mL (1.76-6.01) versus 0.99 ng/mL (0.51-1.83) and 1.47 ng/mL (0.80-1.56), respectively, P < 0.0001. Conversely, the galectin-3 concentration was lower in mesothelioma: 11.50 ng/mL (6.73-23.53) versus 24.74 ng/mL (20.42-70.35) and 17.64 ng/mL (14.81-24.68), respectively, P < 0.0001. The AUC for CCL2 were 0.8030 and 0.7716 for differentiating mesothelioma from adenocarcinoma or benign effusions, respectively. Similarly, the AUC obtained for galectin-3 were 0.7980 and 0.6923, respectively. In conclusion, type-III collagen, CCL2 and galectin-3 are promising new diagnostic markers for mesothelioma.
Project description:Regional delivery of oncolytic viruses has been shown to promote immune responses. Malignant pleural effusions comprise an immunosuppressive microenvironment, and the ability of oncolytic viruses to generate immune responses following regional delivery in patients with malignant pleural effusions is unknown. We conducted a phase I clinical trial that studied the intrapleural administration of oncolytic vaccinia virus to establish the safety and feasibility in patients with malignant pleural effusion due to malignant pleural mesothelioma or metastatic disease. In patients with malignant pleural mesothelioma, by correlative analysis of pre- and post-treatment tumor biopsies, we provide insight into tumor-specific viral uptake and associated immune responses.
Project description:Malignant pleural mesothelioma (MPM) is an asbestos-related lethal malignancy refractory to conventional therapies. Since its symptoms are not specific, MPM can be easily confused with other chest diseases, especially metastatic lung adenocarcinomas (ADCA), and diagnosis is often established late when the disease is at an advanced stage. Classically, a reliable diagnosis requires histological analysis of multiple pleural biopsies. However, there is still no absolute marker for MPM. Thus, with the aim of identifying novel markers with higher specificity and sensitivity, gene expression profiling studies have been conducted using tumor specimens. Because of the cell heterogeneity of tumor samples, we decided to apply counterflow centrifugal elutriation to isolate cancer cells from pleural effusions, which are a common feature of MPM and ADCA. We profiled a total of 54 biological samples corresponding to triplicates of 13 MPM and 4 ADCA as well as the SV40-immortalized cell line MeT-5A. Our microarray results confirmed some of the existing markers which are currently used to distinguish MPM from ADCA by immunostaining of pleural biopsies and which have also been proposed for use in a PCR-based assay. Of particular interest, we also identified novel cellular markers (including predominantly COL3A1, OSAP, OCIAD2, XAGE1), which we validated by real time RT-PCR, and novel soluble markers, such as osteonectin and galectin-3, whose clinical utility as molecular targets remains to be determined. Keywords: cell type comparison three-condition experiment: ADCA vs MPM vs Met5A cells 13 MPM, 4 ADCA and Met5A were independantly grown and harvested 3 biological replicates per cell line, one replicate per array