Abstract
Abstract Liver cancer is an extremely deadly disease ranked as the third most common cancer and the second leading cause of male cancer-related death worldwide. Among primary liver cancers, hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and cholangiocarcinoma (CC) are the two most frequent subtypes, accounting for 85-95% of the total liver cancer cases, and both types of liver cancer have been found to originate from the expansion and differentiation of tumor initiating cells (TICs). Thus, it is critically important to understand mechanisms that regulate liver TICs activation. By utilizing a Pten(loxp/loxp); Albumin-Cre+ mouse liver cancer model (L-PKO), our previous studies have confirmed the activation of TICs during liver tumorigenesis. We also found that SOX9 was expressed in both HCC and CC, suggesting that SOX9 might serve as a liver TICs marker. We thus used the Pten(loxp/loxp); SOX9-CreER+ mouse model (TIC-PKO) to study the role of PTEN in TICs during liver tumorigenesis. Liver tumor development was observed in TIC-PKO mice at the age of 12 months old, and immunohistochemical analysis revealed that the tumors were heterogeneous, indicating TICs were involved in the tumorigenesis process. In addition, treatment of DDC, which is a liver toxin and thus causes hepatocyte death, dramatically increased the incidence and led to the early onset of liver tumorigenesis in the mutant but not the control mice, suggesting that liver injury served as an essential microenvironmental niche in promoting liver tumor development. Together, our observations suggested that the PTEN signaling is critical for TICs regulation and Pten deletion synergizes with liver injury to drive both TICs activation and liver tumorigenesis. Citation Format: Ni Zeng, Anketse Kassa, Janel Kopp, Lina He, Maike Sander, Bangyan Stiles. Pten deletion in SOX9+ cells synergizes with hepatic injury to drive tumor development in mouse liver. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 106th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2015 Apr 18-22; Philadelphia, PA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2015;75(15 Suppl):Abstract nr LB-145. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2015-LB-145
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