Basal Tumor Cell Isolation and Patient-Derived Xenograft Engraftment Identify High-Risk Clinical Bladder Cancers.

Strategies to identify tumors at highest risk for treatment failure are currently under investigation for patients with bladder cancer. We demonstrate that flow cytometric detection of poorly differentiated basal tumor cells (BTCs), as defined by the co-expression of CD90, CD44 and CD49f, directly from patients with early stage tumors (T1-T2 and N0) and patient-derived xenograft (PDX) engraftment in locally advanced tumors (T3-T4 or N+) predict poor prognosis in patients with bladder cancer. Comparative transcriptomic analysis of bladder tumor cells isolated from PDXs indicates unique patterns of gene expression during bladder tumor cell differentiation. We found cell division cycle 25C (CDC25C) overexpression in poorly differentiated BTCs and determined that CDC25C expression predicts adverse survival independent of standard clinical and pathologic features in bladder cancer patients. Taken together, our findings support the utility of BTCs and bladder cancer PDX models in the discovery of novel molecular targets and predictive biomarkers for personalizing oncology care for patients.

Oncogenic CXCL10 signalling drives metastasis development and poor clinical outcome.

BACKGROUND: The CXCL10/CXCR3 signalling mediates paracrine interactions between tumour and stromal cells that govern leukocyte trafficking and angiogenesis. Emerging data implicate noncanonical CXCL10/CXCR3 signalling in tumourigenesis and metastasis. However, little is known regarding the role for autocrine CXCL10/CXCR3 signalling in regulating the metastatic potential of individual tumour clones. METHODS: We performed transcriptomic and cytokine profiling to characterise the functions of CXCL10 and CXCR3 in tumour cells with different metastatic abilities. We modulated the expression of the CXCL10/CXCR3 pathway using shRNA-mediated silencing in both in vitro and in vivo models of B16F1 melanoma. In addition, we examined the expression of CXCL10 and CXCR3 and their associations with clinical outcomes in clinical data sets derived from over 670 patients with melanoma and colon and renal cell carcinomas. RESULTS: We identified a critical role for autocrine CXCL10/CXCR3 signalling in promoting tumour cell growth, motility and metastasis. Analysis of publicly available clinical data sets demonstrated that coexpression of CXCL10 and CXCR3 predicted an increased metastatic potential and was associated with early metastatic disease progression and poor overall survival. CONCLUSION: These findings support the potential for CXCL10/CXCR3 coexpression as a predictor of metastatic recurrence and point towards a role for targeting of this oncogenic axis in the treatment of metastatic disease.