Keck School of Medicine of USC

2 ARTICLES PUBLISHED IN JoVE

Cancer Research

Aqueous Humor as a Liquid Biopsy for Retinoblastoma: Clear Corneal Paracentesis and Genomic Analysis

Mary E. Kim^1,2, Liya Xu^1,2,3,11, Rishvanth K. Prabakar⁴, Lishuang Shen⁵, Chen-Ching Peng^1,3, Peter Kuhn^3,6,7,8, Xiaowu Gai^5,9, James Hicks^3,6,10, Jesse L. Berry^1,2,6,11

¹The Vision Center, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, ²USC Roski Eye Institute, Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California, ³Department of Biological Sciences, Dornsife College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences, University of Southern California, ⁴Department of Molecular and Computational Biology, University of Southern California, ⁵Center for Personalized Medicine, Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, ⁶Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, ⁷Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering, Viterbi School of Engineering, University of Southern California, ⁸Department of Biomedical Engineering, Viterbi School of Engineering, University of Southern California, ⁹Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Keck School of Medicine of USC, ¹⁰Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, ¹¹The Saban Research Institute, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles

The aqueous humor is a high-yield liquid biopsy for retinoblastoma, intraocular cancer that cannot be biopsied in vivo due to the risk of extraocular spread. Herein, a method for safely extracting aqueous humor via clear corneal paracentesis and steps for genomic analysis to identify prognostic biomarkers are presented.

Developmental Biology

Modeling Paracrine Noncanonical Wnt Signaling In Vitro

Omar Toubat¹, Jongkyu Choi¹, S. Ram Kumar^1,2,3

¹Department of Surgery, Keck School of Medicine of USC, ²Department of Pediatrics, Keck School of Medicine of USC, ³Heart Institute, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles

The present study outlines a highly reproducible and tractable method to study paracrine noncanonical Wnt signaling events in vitro. This protocol was applied to evaluate the impact of paracrine Wnt5a signaling in murine neural crest cells and myoblasts.