Cell and Tissue Facility
This resource is lead by PPS-OC senior co-investigator Thea Tlsty at the University of California San Francisco. The cell and tissue facility provides PS-OC investigators with standardized cell lines of equivalent passage number and defined characteristics.
There is great power is comparing several human cell or tissue types across the continuum of malignancy. This kind of comparison allows identification of commonalities in the cell's response to stress, and their potential to generate genetic diversity.
Human breast and prostate tissues were used to isolate cells of interest, including epithelial cells and fibroblasts. Immunohistochemistry (IHC) analysis was performed by members of the Tlsty Lab at UCSF. Analysis was performed on breast and prostate tissue sections in order to compare expression of markers of interest between disease-free and diseased tissues treated or not with various stressors such as chemotherapeutic drugs or gamma-radiation which constitute the most common forms of treatment for cancer patients.
Two cell lines were chosen for joint analysis by the PS-OC network. The breast cancer cell lines, MCF10A and MDA-MB231 represent early and late representatives of malignant transformation respectively.The two cell lines provided by the UCSF Cell and Tissue Shared Facility will allow investigators to determine if differential responses to stress and activation of evolutionary forces distinguish the two populations.
The Princeton PS-OC is working on growing the cells in 2-D and 3-D microenvironments.