Article Text

Download PDFPDF

S130 Human mesothelioma cell lines developed from malignant pleural effusions as tools to develop novel therapies and guide personalised medicine
  1. NI Kanellakis1,
  2. R Asciak1,
  3. X Yao2,
  4. Y Peng2,
  5. R Mercer3,4,
  6. TP Sherrill5,
  7. F Maldonado5,
  8. D Ebner6,
  9. LW Seymour7,
  10. RC Rintoul8,
  11. TS Blackwell5,
  12. GT Stathopoulos9,
  13. T Dong2,
  14. NM Rahman3,
  15. I Psallidas1
  1. 1Laboratory of Pleural and Lung Cancer Translational Research, Nuffield Department of Medicine, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
  2. 2Centre for Translational Immunology, CAMS-Oxford Institute, Nuffield Department of Medicine, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK; MRC Human Immunology Unit, Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
  3. 3Oxford Centre for Respiratory Medicine, Churchill Hospital, Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Oxford, UK
  4. 4Laboratory of Pleural and Lung Cancer Translational Research, Nuffield Department of Medicine, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
  5. 5Department of Medicine, Division of Allergy, Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, Nashville, USA
  6. 6Target Discovery Institute, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
  7. 7Department of Oncology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
  8. 8Department of Thoracic Oncology, Papworth Hospital Foundation National Health Service Trust, Papworth Everard, Cambridge, UK
  9. 9Comprehensive Pneumology Center and Institute for Lung Biology and Disease, University Hospital, Ludwig-Maximilian University, Munich, Germany

Abstract

Background Mesothelioma is an aggressive and incurable malignancy which typically presents with malignant pleural effusion (MPE) and is strongly associated with shortened life expectancy and compromised quality of life. Management of MPE remains symptomatic and current mesothelioma chemotherapy regiments only prolong survival by approximately 10 weeks. The development of novel treatments and translational models to improve patients’ management are desperately needed.

Aim To develop a panel of human mesothelioma cell lines suitable for high-throughput drug screening and discovery of novel therapies.

Methods MPE samples from patients with mesothelioma who underwent pleural fluid aspiration were collected and cultured for at least 20 passages to establish a pure cancer cell population. The cells were grown until 70%–80% confluency before passaging. Between every passage a proportion of the cells was frozen and kept as a backup to cross-examine the genetic profile. T-cells from the MPEs were isolated and cultured to examine the potency of anticancer immunotherapies. To enrich our panel, early passage primary cells derived from pleural biopsies (MesobanK, UK) were grown to pure cancer cell lines.

Results We established a panel of 30 primary personalised mesothelioma cell (PMC) lines, with a success rate of 65% (30/48). The cells were immortal, exhibited colony formation, pale cytoplasm and nuclear atypia. An anticancer drug library was used to perform a preliminary high-throughput drug screening assay on 3 of the PMC lines (figure 1). Cell viability was measured 48 hours post treatment and each agent’s response was compared to pemetrexed/cisplatin (z-score). Average Z-Factor for responsive cell lines was 0.6 suggesting the screen performed as expected. Results demonstrated the heterogeneous drug response between different patients. T-cells were successfully cultured from MPEs with a potential to examine T-cell antigen specific treatments.

Conclusions We designed and developed a methodology to establish patient derived mesothelioma cell lines that can be used as tools for the discovery of novel treatments and to refine management.

Abstract S130 Figure 1

Heatmap of unsupervised hierarchical clustering of the drug response. Each column represents an PMC line and each row a drug. The colours represent the cell viability Z scores. Far red represents maximal viability (no drug response), while dark blue represents best drug response. There is an interpatient heterogeneous response to anticancer drugs

Statistics from Altmetric.com

Request Permissions

If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.