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Modeling Oral-Esophageal Squamous Cell Carcinoma in 3D Organoids
Published on: December 23, 2022
Genetic alterations in a telomerase-immortalized human esophageal epithelial cell line: implications for
Pak Yan Cheung1, Wen Deng, Cornelia Man
1Cancer Biology Group, Department of Anatomy, Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong SAR, China.
Abstract:
Ectopic expression of viral oncoproteins disrupts cellular functions and limits the value of many existing immortalization models as models for carcinogenesis, especially for cancers without definitive viral etiology. Our newly established telomerase-immortalized human esophageal epithelial cell line, NE2-hTERT, retained nearly-diploid and non-tumorigenic characteristics, but exhibited genetic and genomic alterations commonly found in esophageal cancer, including progressive loss of the p16(INK4a) alleles, upregulation of anti-apoptotic proteins, epithelial-mesenchymal transition, whole-chromosome 7 gain and duplicated 5q arm. Our data also revealed a novel positive regulation of p16(INK4a) on cyclin D1. These findings probably represent early crucial events and mechanisms in esophageal carcinogenesis.
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