Vincent Krista Marie, Postovit Lynne-Marie
Department of Oncology, Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, T6G 2E1, Canada.
Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology, Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry, University of Western Ontario, London, ON N6A 3K7, Canada.
Oncotarget. 2017 Feb 7;8(6):10498-10509. doi: 10.18632/oncotarget.14443.
Melanoma researchers utilize cell lines to model many tumour phenomena. It is thus important to understand similarities and differences between cell lines and the tumours that they represent, so that the optimal models can be chosen to answer specific research questions. Herein, we compared the transcriptomes of 42 melanoma cell lines to hundreds of tumours from The Cancer Genome Atlas and thousands of single melanoma cells. Tumour purity was accounted for using the ESTIMATE algorithm, so that differences likely resulting from non-tumour cells could be accounted for. In addition, UV mutational signatures and the expression of skin-associated genes were analyzed in order to identify the putative origin of various cell lines. We found the transcriptional and mutational characteristics of melanoma cell lines to mirror those of the tumours, with the exception of immune-associated transcripts, which were absent in cell culture. We also determined cell lines that highly or poorly recapitulate melanomas and have identified colon (COLO 741) and lung (COLO 699) cancer cell lines that may actually be melanoma. In summary, this study represents a comprehensive comparison of melanoma cell lines and tumours that can be used as a guide for researchers when selecting melanoma cell line models.
黑色素瘤研究人员利用细胞系来模拟多种肿瘤现象。因此，了解细胞系与其所代表的肿瘤之间的异同非常重要，这样才能选择最佳模型来回答特定的研究问题。在此，我们将42种黑色素瘤细胞系的转录组与来自癌症基因组图谱的数百个肿瘤以及数千个单个黑色素瘤细胞进行了比较。使用ESTIMATE算法计算肿瘤纯度，以便能够解释可能由非肿瘤细胞导致的差异。此外，还分析了紫外线突变特征和皮肤相关基因的表达，以确定各种细胞系的假定起源。我们发现黑色素瘤细胞系的转录和突变特征与肿瘤相似，但免疫相关转录本除外，其在细胞培养中不存在。我们还确定了高度或低度重现黑色素瘤的细胞系，并鉴定出可能实际上是黑色素瘤的结肠（COLO 741）和肺癌（COLO 699）细胞系。总之，本研究对黑色素瘤细胞系和肿瘤进行了全面比较，可为研究人员选择黑色素瘤细胞系模型提供指导。
