PCR-based zebrafish model for personalised medicine in head and neck cancer

Area of Science:

• Oncology
• Zebrafish Models
• Molecular Biology

Background:

• In vivo personalized cancer drug testing remains challenging.
• Zebrafish larvae xenografts show promise for drug testing against patient-derived tumors.
• Current imaging methods for drug efficacy assessment in xenografts have limitations, including time constraints.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a novel, rapid, and cost-effective PCR-based assay for evaluating anti-cancer drug efficacy.
• To compare the efficacy of the PCR-based assay with traditional imaging techniques in a zebrafish larvae xenograft model.
• To screen multiple compounds for anti-cancer activity using the developed assay.

Main Methods:

• Established a zebrafish larvae xenograft model using head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) cell lines and a patient-derived tumor sample.
• Evaluated cisplatin efficacy using both imaging and PCR-based methods (quantitative PCR and droplet digital PCR).
• Performed drug screening of eight compounds on HNSCC cell lines and patient samples via PCR.

Main Results:

• PCR-based methods (qPCR and ddPCR) demonstrated comparable results to imaging in assessing cisplatin's reduction of cancer cell growth.
• The quantitative PCR assay confirmed a dose-dependent response of HNSCC cells to cisplatin.
• Drug screening revealed varying efficacies of tested compounds across different HNSCC cell lines and the patient sample.

Conclusions:

• Introduced a novel, efficient, and economical PCR-based assay for in vivo drug response evaluation in zebrafish larvae.
• The assay is suitable for testing both cancer cell lines and clinical tumor samples.
• This PCR method complements existing imaging techniques for enhanced drug efficacy assessment.