lentivirus preparation and reprogramming transduction for pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma cells

Reprogramming PDAC and Pancreatic Cells into Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is one of the most fatal malignancies, and early diagnosis remains challenging due to the asymptomatic nature of the disease. The majority of PDAC patients are diagnosed at the advanced metastatic stage when very limited treatment options are available1,2. This is mainly due to the lack of reliable biomarkers for the earlier stages, such as those that could be conveniently detected as proteins released into the bloodstream.
PDAC can disseminate very early during its progression, and a better prognosis has been linked to early cancer detection when PDAC is localized in the pancreas3. However, less than a tenth of PDAC patients are diagnosed with a favorable prognosis, allowing for surgical resection. Nonetheless, those few with resectable tumors are also prone to tumor recurrence within 12 months4.
In the past five decades, remarkable improvements have been made in surgical techniques, patient care, and treatment modalities5,6. However, the 5-year survival rate in surgically resected PDAC patients has barely risen to 17%. Nonetheless, this is still better than that in non-resected patients, which has remained almost unchanged (0.9%)4,7. Chemotherapy is the only other alternative PDAC treatment. Yet, this option is very limited as the great majority of PDAC patients exhibit strong resistance to chemotherapy medications such as Gemcitabine7,8. Other drugs, such as Erlotinib, are only available to a small group of PDAC patients with specific mutations, most of whom show Erlotinib resistance9. The adverse side effects associated with chemotherapy in most PDAC patients are yet another disadvantage of this treatment10. Recently, promising strategies have shown that immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) and small molecule kinase inhibitors (SMKIs) can be effective in treating PDAC, but durable responses to these targeted therapies remain limited to a minority of patients11,12. Overall, the discovery of PDAC-specific early biomarkers can pave new avenues for early diagnosis and treatment.
PDAC develops from pancreatic intraepithelial neoplasms (PanIN) precursor lesions that result from non-invasive pancreatic duct epithelial proliferations13,14. While the formation of PanIN is initiated by oncogene mutations such as KRAS, additional genetic and epigenetic alterations are required for the progression to PDAC. It has been projected that the progression of PanIN through the different stages into invasive PDAC takes about 10 years13,15,16,17. This timeframe provides a great opportunity to benefit from early PDAC diagnosis. Therefore, extensive research has been carried out to establish tumor xenograft animal models and organoid cultures to study PDAC progression18,19,20,21. These models have been very useful for studying the invasive stages of PDAC, although not the transition from the early PanIN phases. It is, therefore, important to develop experimental models that can recapitulate the early progression of PanIN stages to enable the discovery of early detection biomarkers.
Reprogramming somatic cells into induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) using the four transcription factors OCT4, SOX2, KLF4, and c-MYC (OSKM) has illustrated the extent of cellular plasticity22. Cancer cell plasticity has been well-documented, and reprogramming human cancer cells into iPSCs has been successfully used to reset cells to their original cellular state, removing many of the epigenetic insults that have accumulated during cancer progression23,24,25,26,27,28,29. The possibility of using this reprogramming strategy to manipulate cancer cell identity has, therefore, presented great promise in treating cancer30,31. Indeed, we have previously shown that the differentiation of iPSCs derived from PDACs can recapitulate PDAC progression through the early PanIN stages32. By identifying genes and pathways specific to the early-to-intermediate stages of PDAC, candidate biomarkers were identified that can be clinically used for early PDAC diagnosis32,33. However, the biomarkers discovered using a single iPSC line showed limited coverage in the majority of PDAC patients32. The challenges of generating iPSC lines from other PDAC patients have halted the ability to discover more reliable biomarkers. This is due to many technical factors, including the heterogeneity of OSKM delivery, as only a small portion of human primary PDAC cells contained all four factors and responded successfully to reprogramming. Here, a detailed protocol is presented for reprogramming primary PDAC cells using a more efficient and consistent dual lentiviral delivery of OSKM.

Author Spotlight: Reprogramming Cancer Cells to iPSCs to Study Disease Progression and Treatment Targets

Reprogramming Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma to Pluripotency

1 One of the most challenging aspects of studying PDAC<v>2 or pancreatic cancer is the availability 3 of an experimental model 4 that can recapitulate the progression 5 of PDAC from the early proline stages 6 to the aggressive state. 7 The other challenge is to experimentally capture 8 the plasticity and heterogeneity of PDAC. 9 So using PDAC IPS cells will help us tackle 10 some of these challenges 11 and expand our experimental tools to study this disease.12 We have established a robust protocol 13 to reprogram PDACs to iPS cells. 14 By generating more iPS lines from many more PDAC patients, 15 we can study the transition of pancreatic cancer 16 from early to advanced stages and see the commonalities 17 and differences between these lines. 18 This will help us discover early diagnostic markers 19 that cover more patients, 20 and generate drugs that target 21 the different states of the disease.22 The interesting question that came out of reprogramming 23 PDAC to iPS cells is what makes this cancer 24 so resistant to sulfate conversion compared to normal cells? 25 Is this due to specific genes or genetic mutations 26 that tell us something about cancer cell identity?

Lentivirus Preparation and Reprogramming Transduction for Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma Cells

1 2 To begin, see the HEK 293T cells<v>3 24 hours before transfection 4 in a 15 centimeter dish containing GMEN. 5 Incubate the cells at 37 degrees Celsius 6 and 5%carbon dioxide 7 until they reach 40 to 50%confluency. 8 Label three 15 milliliter plastic tubes 9 with the appropriate lentivirus name.10 Add 1.710 milliliters of reduced serum medium 11 and 90 microliters of transfection reagent to each tube. 12 Mix the contents by vortexing 13 before incubating the tubes at room temperature. 14 After five minutes, add the packaging vector mixture 15 to the transfection medium and vortex.16 Then add 7.5 micrograms of reprogramming vector 17 and the pWPT-GFP control 18 to the respective transfection mixture. 19 Vortex the tubes for two seconds 20 before incubating for 15 minutes at room temperature. 21 To transfect the 293T cells with each lentivirus, 22 dropwise, add a transfection DNA mixture into the dish.23 Incubate the transfected cells at 37 degrees Celsius 24 and 5%carbon dioxide. 25 After 14 to 16 hours, 26 replace the medium with 30 milliliters 27 of fresh 293T medium 28 and continue incubation for 60 to 72 hours. 29 Observe the cells daily 30 and check transfection efficiency.31 Next, transfer the virus transfection culture 32 into 15 milliliter tubes 33 and spin down at 1, 932 G for 10 minutes 34 at four degrees Celsius. 35 Filter the lentiviral supernatant 36 using a 0.45 micron syringe filter 37 into a new 50 milliliter tube. 38 One day before lentivirus transduction, 39 prepare two wells of a 6-well plate 40 containing 100, 000 PDAC cells per well.41 Prepare two 15 milliliter tubes 42 with two milliliters of pre-warmed PDAC medium. 43 In the first tube, 44 add 12 milliliters of reprogramming lentivirus. 45 Then add 12 microliters of polybrene 46 and mix by pipetting.47 To the second tube, 48 add two microliters of polybrene. 49 Now carefully remove the medium from each well 50 of a 6-well plate 51 and wash once with PBS at room temperature. 52 Add the reprogramming infection medium 53 from tube one to the first well.54 Add the mixture from tube two to the second well. 55 Incubate the cells overnight at 37 degrees Celsius 56 with 5%carbon dioxide and 5%oxygen. 57 The next day, replace the medium 58 from both wells with fresh PDAC medium 59 and continue incubation 60 for up to 48 hours as demonstrated.

lentivirus-preparation-reprogramming-transduction-for-pancreatic

Research

JoVE Journal

Cancer Research

The generation of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) using transcription factors has been achieved from almost any differentiated cell type and has proved highly valuable for research and clinical applications. Interestingly, iPSC reprogramming of cancer cells, such as pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC), has been shown to revert the invasive PDAC phenotype and override the cancer epigenome. The differentiation of PDAC-derived iPSCs can recapitulate PDAC progression from its early pancreatic intraepithelial neoplasia (PanIN) precursor, revealing the molecular and cellular changes that occur early during PDAC progression. Therefore, PDAC-derived iPSCs can be used to model the earliest stages of PDAC for the discovery of early-detection diagnostic markers. This is particularly important for PDAC patients, who are typically diagnosed at the late metastatic stages due to a lack of reliable biomarkers for the earlier PanIN stages. However, reprogramming cancer cell lines, including PDAC, into pluripotency remains challenging, labor-intensive, and highly variable between different lines. Here, we describe a more consistent protocol for generating iPSCs from various human PDAC cell lines using bicistronic lentiviral vectors. The resulting iPSC lines are stable, showing no dependence on the exogenous expression of reprogramming factors or inducible drugs. Overall, this protocol facilitates the generation of a wide range of PDAC-derived iPSCs, which is essential for discovering early biomarkers that are more specific and representative of PDAC cases.

The present protocol describes the reprogramming of Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma (PDAC) and normal pancreatic ductal epithelial cells into induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). We provide an optimized and detailed, step-by-step procedure, from preparing lentivirus to establishing stable iPSC lines.

The generation of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) using transcription factors has been achieved from almost any differentiated cell type and has ...

Preparation of iMEF Feeder Cells and Reprogramming Transduction for Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells

1 To begin, coat the 6-well plate<v>2 with two milliliters of 0.2%gelatin solution per well. 3 Incubate the plate at 37 degrees Celsius 4 and 5%carbon dioxide for 30 minutes. 5 Next, drop-wise add iMEFs into a 15 milliliter tube 6 containing 10 milliliters 7 of pre-warmed human fibroblast medium, 8 and mix by gently inverting the tube.9 Centrifuge the cell suspension at 309 G for three minutes. 10 And remove the supernatant before re-suspending the pellet 11 in 12 milliliters of human fibroblast medium. 12 Place two milliliters of the cell suspension 13 into each well of the gelatin-coated six well plate.14 And incubate overnight at 37 degrees Celsius 15 and 5%carbon dioxide. 16 Discard the medium from the lentivirus-infected 17 and non-infected PDAC, and wash the cells twice with PBS. 18 Then add 500 microliters of trypsin to dissociate the cells.19 And incubate at 37 degrees Celsius 20 with 5%carbon dioxide and 5%oxygen 21 for 15 minutes. 22 Centrifuge the cell suspension at 300 G for five minutes. 23 And re-suspend the pellet in one milliliter of PDAC medium.24 Wash the iMEF plate with PDAC medium. 25 Then add 50, 000 lentivirus-infected PDAC cells 26 per well in five wells of iMEF plate, and incubate overnight 27 as demonstrated previously. 28 After preparing the reprogramming medium, 29 add 100 microliters of basic fibroblasts growth factor 30 to 100 milliliters of reprogramming medium.31 The next day, wash the cells growing on iMEF feeders twice 32 with pre-warmed reprogramming media. 33 Then add two milliliters of media to each well, 34 and incubate overnight at 37 degrees Celsius 35 with 5%carbon dioxide and 3%oxygen. 36 After passing the IPSC pool five times, 37 observe the robust colonies 38 maintaining ESC-like morphology.39 The PDAC, BxPc3, 40 H6c7, and human fibroblast 41 showed different days of reprogramming 42 to form a mature ESC-like morphology. 43 Clonal IPSC lines were established 44 from each reprogramming of PDAC, 45 BxPc3, H6c7, 46 and human fibroblast cells. 47 All established IPSC lines stained positive 48 for TRA-160, confirming their reprogramming to pluripotency.