| 1. |
- Senkowski, Wojciech
(författare)
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High-throughput screening using multicellular tumor spheroids to reveal and exploit tumor-specific vulnerabilities
- 2017
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- High-throughput drug screening (HTS) in live cells is often a vital part of the preclinical anticancer drug discovery process. So far, two-dimensional (2D) monolayer cell cultures have been the most prevalent model in HTS endeavors. However, 2D cell cultures often fail to recapitulate the complex microenvironments of in vivo tumors. Monolayer cultures are highly proliferative and generally do not contain quiescent cells, thought to be one of the main reasons for the anticancer therapy failure in clinic. Thus, there is a need for in vitro cellular models that would increase predictive value of preclinical research results. The utilization of more complex three-dimensional (3D) cell cultures, such as multicellular tumor spheroids (MCTS), which contain both proliferating and quiescent cells, has therefore been proposed. However, difficult handling and high costs still pose significant hurdles for application of MCTS for HTS.In this work, we aimed to develop novel assays to apply MCTS for HTS and drug evaluation. We also set out to identify cellular processes that could be targeted to selectively eradicate quiescent cancer cells. In Paper I, we developed a novel MCTS-based HTS assay and found that nutrient-deprived and hypoxic cancer cells are selectively vulnerable to treatment with inhibitors of mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation (OXPHOS). We also identified nitazoxanide, an FDA-approved anthelmintic agent, to act as an OXPHOS inhibitor and to potentiate the effects of standard chemotherapy in vivo. Subsequently, in Paper II we applied the high-throughput gene-expression profiling method for MCTS-based drug screening. This led to discovery that quiescent cells up-regulate the mevalonate pathway upon OXPHOS inhibition and that the combination of OXPHOS inhibitors and mevalonate pathway inhibitors (statins) results in synergistic toxicity in this cell population. In Paper III, we developed a novel spheroid-based drug combination-screening platform and identified a set of molecules that synergize with nitazoxanide to eradicate quiescent cancer cells. Finally, in Paper IV, we applied our MCTS-based methods to evaluate the effects of phosphodiesterase (PDE) inhibitors in PDE3A-expressing cell lines.In summary, this work illustrates how MCTS-based HTS yields potential to reveal and exploit previously unrecognized tumor-specific vulnerabilities. It also underscores the importance of cell culture conditions in preclinical drug discovery endeavors.
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| 2. |
- Gustafsson, Mats G., et al.
(författare)
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Improving Bayesian credibility intervals for classifier error rates using maximum entropy empirical priors
- 2010
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Ingår i: Artificial Intelligence in Medicine. - : Elsevier BV. - 0933-3657 .- 1873-2860. ; 49:2, s. 93-104
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Objective:Successful use of classifiers that learn to make decisions from a set of patient examples require robust methods for performance estimation. Recently many promising approaches for determination of an upper bound for the error rate of a single classifier have been reported but the Bayesian credibility interval (Cl) obtained from a conventional holdout test still delivers one of the tightest bounds. The conventional Bayesian CI becomes unacceptably large in real world applications where the test set sizes are less than a few hundred. The source of this problem is that fact that the Cl is determined exclusively by the result on the test examples. In other words, there is no information at all provided by the uniform prior density distribution employed which reflects complete lack of prior knowledge about the unknown error rate. Therefore, the aim of the study reported here was to study a maximum entropy (ME) based approach to improved prior knowledge and Bayesian CIs, demonstrating its relevance for biomedical research and clinical practice.Method and material:It is demonstrated how a refined non-uniform prior density distribution can be obtained by means of the ME principle using empirical results from a few designs and tests using non-overlapping sets of examples.Results:Experimental results show that ME based priors improve the CIs when employed to four quite different simulated and two real world data sets.Conclusions:An empirically derived ME prior seems promising for improving the Bayesian Cl for the unknown error rate of a designed classifier.
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| 3. |
- Aftab, Obaid, 1984-, et al.
(författare)
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Detection of cell aggregation and altered cell viability by automated label-free video microscopy : A promising alternative to endpoint viability assays in high throughput screening
- 2015
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Ingår i: Journal of Biomolecular Screening. - : Elsevier BV. - 1087-0571 .- 1552-454X. ; 20:3, s. 372-381
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Automated phase-contrast video microscopy now makes it feasible to monitor a high-throughput (HT) screening experiment in a 384-well microtiter plate format by collecting one time-lapse video per well. Being a very cost-effective and label-free monitoring method, its potential as an alternative to cell viability assays was evaluated. Three simple morphology feature extraction and comparison algorithms were developed and implemented for analysis of differentially time-evolving morphologies (DTEMs) monitored in phase-contrast microscopy videos. The most promising layout, pixel histogram hierarchy comparison (PHHC), was able to detect several compounds that did not induce any significant change in cell viability, but made the cell population appear as spheroidal cell aggregates. According to recent reports, all these compounds seem to be involved in inhibition of platelet-derived growth factor receptor (PDGFR) signaling. Thus, automated quantification of DTEM (AQDTEM) holds strong promise as an alternative or complement to viability assays in HT in vitro screening of chemical compounds.
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| 4. |
- Aftab, Obaid, 1984-, et al.
(författare)
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Label free quantification of time evolving morphologies using time-lapse video microscopy enables identity control of cell lines and discovery of chemically induced differential activity in iso-genic cell line pairs
- 2015
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Ingår i: Chemometrics and Intelligent Laboratory Systems. - 0169-7439 .- 1873-3239. ; 141, s. 24-32
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Label free time-lapse video microscopy based monitoring of time evolving cell population morphology has potential to offer a simple and cost effective method for identity control of cell lines. Such morphology monitoring also has potential to offer discovery of chemically induced differential changes between pairs of cell lines of interest, for example where one in a pair of cell lines is normal/sensitive and the other malignant/resistant. A new simple algorithm, pixel histogram hierarchy comparison (PHHC), for comparison of time evolving morphologies (TEM) in phase contrast time-lapse microscopy movies was applied to a set of 10 different cell lines and three different iso-genic colon cancer cell line pairs, each pair being genetically identical except for a single mutation. PHHC quantifies differences in morphology by comparing pixel histogram intensities at six different resolutions. Unsupervised clustering and machine learning based classification methods were found to accurately identify cell lines, including their respective iso-genic variants, through time-evolving morphology. Using this experimental setting, drugs with differential activity in iso-genic cell line pairs were likewise identified. Thus, this is a cost effective and expedient alternative to conventional molecular profiling techniques and might be useful as part of the quality control in research incorporating cell line models, e.g. in any cell/tumor biology or toxicology project involving drug/agent differential activity in pairs of cell line models.
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| 5. |
- Karlsson, Henning, et al.
(författare)
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Mechanistic characterization of a copper containing thiosemicarbazone with potent antitumor activity
- 2017
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Ingår i: Oncotarget. - : Impact Journals, LLC. - 1949-2553. ; 8:18, s. 30217-30234
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Background: The thiosemicarbazone CD 02750 (VLX50) was recently reported as a hit compound in a phenotype-based drug screen in primary cultures of patient tumor cells. We synthesized a copper complex of VLX50, denoted VLX60, and characterized its antitumor and mechanistic properties. Materials and Methods: The cytotoxic effects and mechanistic properties of VLX60 were investigated in monolayer cultures of multiple human cell lines, in tumor cells from patients, in a 3-D spheroid cell culture system and in vivo and were compared with those of VLX50. Results: VLX60 showed ?3-fold higher cytotoxic activity than VLX50 in 2-D cultures and, in contrast to VLX50, retained its activity in the presence of additional iron. VLX60 was effective against non-proliferative spheroids and against tumor xenografts in vivo in a murine model. In contrast to VLX50, gene expression analysis demonstrated that genes associated with oxidative stress were considerably enriched in cells exposed to VLX60 as was induction of reactive oxygen. VLX60 compromised the ubiquitin-proteasome system and was more active in BRAF mutated versus BRAF wild-type colon cancer cells. Conclusions: The cytotoxic effects of the copper thiosemicarbazone VLX60 differ from those of VLX50 and shows interesting features as a potential antitumor drug, notably against BRAF mutated colorectal cancer.
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| 6. |
- Milani, Lili, et al.
(författare)
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Allelic imbalance in gene expression as a guide to cis-acting regulatory single nucleotide polymorphisms in cancer cells
- 2007
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Ingår i: Nucleic Acids Research. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 0305-1048 .- 1362-4962. ; 35:5, s. E34-
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Using the relative expression levels of two SNIP alleles of a gene in the same sample is an effective approach for identifying cis-acting regulatory SNPs (rSNPs). In the current study, we established a process for systematic screening for cis-acting rSNPs using experimental detection of Al as an initial approach. We selected 160 expressed candidate genes that are involved in cancer and anticancer drug resistance for analysis of All in a panel of cell lines that represent different types of cancers and have been well characterized for their response patterns against anticancer drugs. Of these genes, 60 contained heterozygous SNPs in their coding regions, and 41 of the genes displayed imbalanced expression of the two cSNP alleles. Genes that displayed Al were subjected to bioinformatics-assisted identification of rSNPs that alter the strength of transcription factor binding. rSNPs in 15 genes were subjected to electrophoretic mobility shift assay, and in eight of these genes (APC, BCL2, CCND2, MLH1, PARP1, SLIT2, YES1, XRCC1) we identified differential protein binding from a nuclear extract between the SNIP alleles. The screening process allowed us to zoom in from 160 candidate genes to eight genes that may contain functional rSNPs in their promoter regions.
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| 7. |
- Nazir, Madiha, et al.
(författare)
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Targeting tumor cells based on Phosphodiesterase 3A expression
- 2017
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Ingår i: Experimental Cell Research. - : Elsevier BV. - 0014-4827 .- 1090-2422. ; 361:2, s. 308-315
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We and others have previously reported a correlation between high phosphodiesterase 3 A (PDE3A) expression and selective sensitivity to phosphodiesterase (PDE) inhibitors. This indicates that PDE3A could serve both as a drug target and a biomarker of sensitivity to PDE3 inhibition. In this report, we explored publicly available mRNA gene expression data to identify cell lines with different PDE3A expression. Cell lines with high PDE3A expression showed marked in vitro sensitivity to PDE inhibitors zardaverine and quazinone, when compared with those having low PDE3A expression. Immunofluorescence and immunohistochemical stainings were in agreement with PDE3A mRNA expression, providing suitable alternatives for biomarker analysis of clinical tissue specimens. Moreover, we here demonstrate that tumor cells from patients with ovarian carcinoma show great variability in PDE3A protein expression and that level of PDE3A expression is correlated with sensitivity to PDE inhibition. Finally, we demonstrate that PDE3A is highly expressed in subsets of patient tumor cell samples from different solid cancer diagnoses and expressed at exceptional levels in gastrointestinal stromal tumor (GIST) specimens. Importantly, vulnerability to PDE3 inhibitors has recently been associated with co-expression of PDE3A and Schlafen family member 12 (SLFN12). We here demonstrate that high expression of PDE3A in clinical specimens, at least on the mRNA level, seems to be frequently associated with high SLFIV12 expression. In conclusion, PDE3A seems to be both a promising biomarker and drug target for individualized drug treatment of various cancers.
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| 8. |
- Selvin, Tove, et al.
(författare)
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The Immuno-Oncology Hollow Fiber Assay
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Annan publikation (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In order to facilitate the translation of novel immunotherapies from bench to bedside, continued development of predictive preclinical models is essential. Herein, we developed the immuno-oncology hollow fiber assay (HFA) to bridge the gap between cell based in vitro assays and more complex mouse models for evaluation of immuno-oncological agents. The colorectal cancer (CRC) cell line HCT116-GFP and human peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) were co-cultured inside semipermeable hollow fibers. As a proof of concept, aCD3 and IL-2 was used to induce immune cell-mediated cancer cell death. During in vitro characterization of the model system, an enhanced effect of aCD3 and IL-2 was observed in the HFA compared to conventional monolayers. Further investigation demonstrated that increased cell proximity alone is sufficient to augment immune cell activation and effector function. To assess the functionality of the assay in vivo, a pilot study was performed using nude mice. Hollow fibers were surgically implanted intraperitoneally (i.p.) and the mice received local injections of aCD3 at the time of implantation and/ or systemic IL-2 via i.p. injection once daily for 3 consecutive days. Compared to untreated mice and mice receiving IL-2 alone, the combination of aCD3 and IL-2 resulted in a significant decrease in cancer cell viability. Traditional in vivo models often necessitate lengthy observation periods to monitor tumor growth and treatment response. We have developed a simplified model system that enables initial in vivo evaluation of immunological agents on cancer and immune cells of human origin within a matter of days.
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