Back

An engineered tumor organoid model reveals cellular identity and signaling trajectories underlying translocation RCC.

Ganpat, M.; Morales-Rodriguez, F.; Pham, N.; Lijnzaad, P.; de Souza, T.; Derakhshan, S.; Fumagalli, A.; Zeller, P.; Balwierz, A.; Ayyildiz, D.; van den Heuvel-Eibrink, M. M.; de Krijger, R. R.; van Oudenaarden, A.; Margaritis, T.; Chuva de Sousa Lopes, S. M.; Drost, J.

2023-09-05 cancer biology
10.1101/2023.09.01.554626 bioRxiv
Show abstract

Translocation renal cell carcinoma (tRCC) is a rare, aggressive type of kidney cancer primarily occurring in children. They are genetically defined by translocations involving MiT/TFE gene family members, TFE3 or, in rare cases, TFEB. The biology underlying tRCC development remains poorly understood, partly due to the lack of representative experimental models. Here, we utilized human kidney organoids, or tubuloids, to engineer a tRCC model by expression of one of the most common MiT/TFE fusions, SFPQ-TFE3. Fusion expressing tubuloids adopt a tRCC-like phenotype and gene expression signature in vitro and grow as clear cell RCC upon xenotransplantation in mice. Genome-wide binding analysis reveals that SFPQ-TFE3 reprograms gene expression signatures by aberrant, gain-of-function genome-wide DNA binding. Combining these analyses with single-cell mRNA readouts reveals an epithelium-to-mesenchymal differentiation trajectory underlying tRCC transformation, potentially caused by deregulated Wnt signaling. Our study demonstrates that SFPQ-TFE3 expression is sufficient to transform kidney epithelial cells into tRCC and defines the trajectories underlying malignant transformation, thereby facilitating the development of new therapeutic interventions.

Matching journals

The top 6 journals account for 50% of the predicted probability mass.

50% of probability mass above

"Similar papers" are the closest papers from that journal in the model's embedding space. They show what the match is built on, but the ranking comes mostly from a classifier over the whole training set, not from these examples alone.