Establishment of highly metastatic ovarian cancer model with omental tropism via in vivo selection

Feiquan Ying; Jing Guo; Xuejiao Gao; Lin Huang; Lingling Gao; Jing Cai; Zehua Wang

doi:10.1016/j.isci.2023.106719

Establishment of highly metastatic ovarian cancer model with omental tropism via in vivo selection

iScience. 2023 Apr 23;26(5):106719. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2023.106719. eCollection 2023 May 19.

Authors

Feiquan Ying¹, Jing Guo¹, Xuejiao Gao¹, Lin Huang¹, Lingling Gao¹, Jing Cai¹, Zehua Wang¹

Affiliation

¹ Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Union Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430022, China.

Abstract

Epithelial ovarian cancer (OC) is often diagnosed at an advanced stage with peritoneal metastasis, and preclinical models mimicking the natural course of OC peritoneal metastasis are essential to improve treatment. We implanted ES2 and ID8 cells in the ovaries of mice and obtained highly metastatic (HM) sublines from their omental metastases after three cycles in vivo selection. Orthotopic xenografts derived from the HM sublines showed enhanced omental tropism and more extensive metastasis with earlier onset. The HM cells exhibited increased in vitro migration and invasion properties, and RNA sequencing revealed that the genes related to epithelial-mesenchymal transition and extracellular matrix regulation were significantly altered in the HM cells. Among them, the upregulated genes were significantly associated with poorer survival in OC patients. In conclusion, these HM sublines can be leveraged to establish spontaneous metastatic OC mouse models, which may serve as ideal preclinical models for anti-metastasis therapy for OC patients.

Keywords: Biological sciences; Cancer; Cell biology.