A new tumorsphere culture condition restores potentials of self-renewal and metastasis of primary neuroblastoma in a mouse neuroblastoma model

PLoS One. 2014 Jan 22;9(1):e86813. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0086813. eCollection 2014.

Abstract

Tumorsphere culture enriches and expands tumor cells, thus providing important resources for cancer studies. However, as compared with metastatic tissues, primary tumors in the nervous system rarely give rise to long-surviving tumorspheres, thereby seriously limiting studies on these cancers. This might be due to the limited self-renewal capability of tumor cells and/or to inappropriate culture conditions. The growth and maintenance of tumor cells may depend on microenvironments and/or cell origins (e.g., primary or metastatic; stem cell-like or progenitor-like). Here, we attempted to establish a tumorsphere culture condition for primary neuroblastoma (NB). Primary tumors in MYCN transgenic mice, a NB model, could be serially transplanted, suggesting that these tumors contain cells with a high self-renewal potential. However, primary tumors did not give rise to tumorspheres under a serum-free neurosphere culture condition. The newly established culture condition (named PrimNeuS) contained two critical ingredients: fetal bovine serum and β-mercaptoethanol were essential for tumorsphere formation as well as indefinite passages. The spheres could be passaged more than 20 times without exhaustion under this condition, exhibited a property of differentiation and formed tumors in vivo. Unexpectedly, PrimNeuS revealed that the MYCN transgenic mice had bone marrow metastasis. Furthermore, subcutaneous tumors derived from tumorspheres of primary tumors showed bone marrow metastasis. Taken together, PrimNeuS provides resources for the study of NB and can be used as a powerful tool for the detection of minimal residual disease and for in vitro evaluation prior to personalized therapy.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Cattle
  • Cell Culture Techniques / methods*
  • Cellular Microenvironment / physiology*
  • Mercaptoethanol
  • Mice
  • Mice, Transgenic
  • N-Myc Proto-Oncogene Protein
  • Neoplasm Metastasis / physiopathology*
  • Neuroblastoma / physiopathology*
  • Proto-Oncogene Proteins / genetics
  • Serum
  • Tumor Cells, Cultured / physiology*

Substances

  • MYCN protein, mouse
  • N-Myc Proto-Oncogene Protein
  • Proto-Oncogene Proteins
  • Mercaptoethanol

Grants and funding

This work was supported in part by a grant-in-aid from the National Cancer Center Research and Development Fund (22-4 to KK; http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/NCI/NCI); by a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research on Innovative Areas (23110002 to KK) from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (MEXT) of Japan (http://www.molecular-activation.jp/index_e.html); by Grants-in-Aid from MEXT (23390078 to KK; 24590377 to SK); Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research on Innovative Areas to MM. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.