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Showing papers by "Mark P. Styczynski published in 2014"


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The metabolic responses of an ovarian cancer cell line and its derived isogenic cancer stem cells differ greatly under most conditions, suggesting that these two cell types may behave quite differently in an in vivo tumor microenvironment.
Abstract: Cancer metabolism is emerging as an important focus area in cancer research. However, the in vitro cell culture conditions under which much cellular metabolism research is performed differ drastically from in vivo tumor conditions, which are characterized by variations in the levels of oxygen, nutrients like glucose, and other molecules like chemotherapeutics. Moreover, it is important to know how the diverse cell types in a tumor, including cancer stem cells that are believed to be a major cause of cancer recurrence, respond to these variations. Here, in vitro environmental perturbations designed to mimic different aspects of the in vivo environment were used to characterize how an ovarian cancer cell line and its derived, isogenic cancer stem cells metabolically respond to environmental cues. Mass spectrometry was used to profile metabolite levels in response to in vitro environmental perturbations. Docetaxel, the chemotherapeutic used for this experiment, caused significant metabolic changes in amino acid and carbohydrate metabolism in ovarian cancer cells, but had virtually no metabolic effect on isogenic ovarian cancer stem cells. Glucose deprivation, hypoxia, and the combination thereof altered ovarian cancer cell and cancer stem cell metabolism to varying extents for the two cell types. Hypoxia had a much larger effect on ovarian cancer cell metabolism, while glucose deprivation had a greater effect on ovarian cancer stem cell metabolism. Core metabolites and pathways affected by these perturbations were identified, along with pathways that were unique to cell types or perturbations. The metabolic responses of an ovarian cancer cell line and its derived isogenic cancer stem cells differ greatly under most conditions, suggesting that these two cell types may behave quite differently in an in vivo tumor microenvironment. While cancer metabolism and cancer stem cells are each promising potential therapeutic targets, such varied behaviors in vivo would need to be considered in the design and early testing of such treatments.

26 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: It is demonstrated that pyrimethamine administration does impact both compartments throughout the experiment, but very limited perturbation of transcript or metabolite abundance was observed following each round of drug exposure.
Abstract: We describe a multi-omic approach to understanding the effects that the anti-malarial drug pyrimethamine has on immune physiology in rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta). Whole blood and bone marrow (BM) RNA-Seq and plasma metabolome profiles (each with over 15,000 features) have been generated for five naive individuals at up to seven timepoints before, during and after three rounds of drug administration. Linear modeling and Bayesian network analyses are both considered, alongside investigations of the impact of statistical modeling strategies on biological inference. Individual macaques were found to be a major source of variance for both omic data types, and factoring individuals into subsequent modeling increases power to detect temporal effects. A major component of the whole blood transcriptome follows the BM with a time-delay, while other components of variation are unique to each compartment. We demonstrate that pyrimethamine administration does impact both compartments throughout the experiment, but very limited perturbation of transcript or metabolite abundance was observed following each round of drug exposure. New insights into the mode of action of the drug are presented in the context of pyrimethamine's predicted effect on suppression of cell division and metabolism in the immune system.

16 citations