The biology underlying nodal metastasis is poorly understood. Transcriptome profiling has helped to characterize both primary tumors seeding nodal metastasis and the metastasis themselves. The interpretation of these data, however, is not without ambiguities. Here we profiled the transcriptomes of 17 papillary thyroid cancer (PTC) nodal metastases, associated primary tumors and primary tumors from N0 patients. We also included patient-matched normal thyroid and lymph node samples as controls to address some limits of previous studies. We found that the transcriptomes of patient-matched primary tumors and metastases were more similar than of unrelated metastases/primary pairs, a result also reported in other organ systems, and that part of this similarity reflected patient background. We found that the comparison of patient-matched primary tumors and metastases was heavily confounded by the presence of lymphoid tissues in the metastasis samples. An original data adjustment procedure was developed to circumvent this problem. It revealed a differential expression of stroma-related gene expression signatures also regulated in other organ systems. The comparison of N0 vs. N+ primary tumors uncovered a signal irreproducible across independent PTC datasets. This signal was also detectable when comparing the normal thyroid tissues adjacent to N0 and N+ tumors, suggesting a cohort specific bias also likely to be present in previous studies with similar statistical power. Classification of N0 vs. N+ yielded an accuracy of 63%, but additional statistical controls not presented in previous studies, revealed that this is likely to occur by chance alone. To address this issue, we used large datasets from The Cancer Genome Atlas and showed that N0 vs. N+ classification rates could not be reached randomly for most cancers. Yet, it was significant, but of limited accuracy (<70%) for thyroid, breast and head and neck cancers.
Revisiting the transcriptional analysis of primary tumours and associated nodal metastases with enhanced biological and statistical controls: application to thyroid cancer.
Sex
View SamplesRadiation is an established cause of thyroid cancer and growing evidence supports a role for H2O2 in spontaneous thyroid carcinogenesis. Little is known about the molecular programs activated by these agents in thyroid cells. We profiled the DNA damage response and cell death induced by -radiation (0.15Gy) and H2O2 (0.00250.3mM) in primary human thyroid cells and T-cells. While the two cell types had more comparable radiation responses, 3- to 10-fold more H2O2 was needed to induce detectable DNA damage in thyrocytes. At H2O2 and radiation doses incurring double-strand breaks (DSB), cell death occurred after 24hrs in T-cells, but not in thyrocytes. We next prepared thyroid and T-cells primary cultures from 8 donors operated for non-cancerous pathologies and profiled their genome-wide transcriptional response 4hr after: 1) exposure to 1 Gy radiation, 2) treatment with H2O2, or 3) no treatment. Two H2O2 doses were investigated, calibrated in each cell type as to elicit levels of single- and double-strand breaks equivalent to 1 Gy -radiation. The transcriptional responses of thyrocyte and T-cells to radiation were similar, involving DNA repair and cell death genes. In addition to this transcriptional program, H2O2 also upregulated antioxidant genes in thyrocytes, including glutathione peroxidases (GPx) at the DSB-inducing dose. By contrast, a transcriptional storm involving thousands of genes was raised in T-cells. Finally, we showed that GPx inhibition reduced the DNA damaging effect of H2O2 in thyrocytes. We conjecture that defects of anti- H2O2 protection could promote spontaneous thyroid cancers.
Comparative analysis of the thyrocytes and T cells: responses to H2O2 and radiation reveals an H2O2-induced antioxidant transcriptional program in thyrocytes.
Sex, Age, Treatment, Subject
View SamplesThe skin interfollicular epidermis (IFE) is the first barrier against the external environment and its maintenance is critical for survival. Two seemingly opposite theories have been proposed to explain IFE homeostasis. One posits that IFE is maintained by a long-lived slow-cycling stem cell (SC) population that give rise to short-lived transit-amplifying (TA) cell progeny, while the other suggests that homeostasis is achieved by a single committed progenitor (CP) that balances stochastic fate. Here, we probed the cellular heterogeneity within the IFE using two different inducible CREER targeting IFE progenitors. Quantitative analysis of clonal fate data and proliferation dynamics demonstrate the existence of two distinct proliferative cell compartments composed of slow-cycling SC and CP, both of which undergo population asymmetric self-renewal. However, following wounding, only SCs contribute substantially to the repair and long-term regeneration of the tissue, while CP cells make a minimal and transient contribution.
Distinct contribution of stem and progenitor cells to epidermal maintenance.
Specimen part
View SamplesBasal cell carcinoma initiating cells undergo profound and rapid reprogramming into embryonic hair follicle progenitor like fate upon SmoM2 expression. Activation of Wnt/-catenin signaling pathways is required in a cell autonomous manner for the reprogramming of adult IFE progenitors into EHFP-like fate as well as for tumor initiation.
Adult interfollicular tumour-initiating cells are reprogrammed into an embryonic hair follicle progenitor-like fate during basal cell carcinoma initiation.
Specimen part
View SamplesIn adult skin, each hair follicle contains a reservoir of stem cells (the bulge), which can be mobilized to regenerate the new follicle with each hair cycle and to reepithelialize epidermis during wound repair. Here we report new methods that permit their clonal analyses and engraftment and demonstrate the two defining features of stem cells, namely self-renewal and multi-potency. We also show that, within the bulge, there are two distinct populations, one of which maintains basal lamina contact and temporally precedes the other, which is suprabasal and arises only after the start of the first postnatal hair cycle. This spatial distinction endows them with discrete transcriptional programs, but surprisingly, both populations are growth inhibited in the niche but can self-renew in vitro and make epidermis and hair when grafted. These findings suggest that the niche microenvironment imposes intrinsic stemness features without restricting the establishment of epithelial polarity and changes in gene expression.
Self-renewal, multipotency, and the existence of two cell populations within an epithelial stem cell niche.
Specimen part
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