Abstract 3102: Identification of actionable cancer genes and treatment options for metastatic ovarian carcinomas using patient-derived xenografts and PDX-derived tumor cells
Authors: Olivero Martina , Erriquez Jessica , Arigoni Maddalena , Capellero Sonia , D'Ambrosio Concetta , Mittica Gloria , Borella Fulvio , Katsaros Dionyssios , Privitera Silvana , Berrino Enrico , Venesio Tiziana , Valabrega Giorgio , Calogero Raffaele , Renzo Maria Flavia Di 
Published: August 2018

Patients with advanced ovarian cancers have experienced little improvement in overall survival with standard treatments even after the incorporation of anti-angiogenic therapies. Besides anti-PARP inhibitors, matching individual critical genomic alterations with the best available drugs has not advanced as in other cancers, likely because a handful of cancer-related genes are mutated at high frequency, while many more are found mutated at much lower frequencies. This so called “mutation tail” is not only long but also mostly unexplored.

We used Patient Derived Xenografts (PDXs) to identify actionable cancer genes and PDX Derived Tumor Cells (PDTCs) to accelerate the discovery of treatment options. We envisioned that the alleged weakness of PDX models, i.e. lack of human stromal and immune cells, might be instrumental to identify mutations in cancer and to test approved or experimental targeted drugs as monotherapy or in different combinations to link biomarkers to treatments.

Fourty-nine PDX lines from metastatic epithelial ovarian carcinomas have been propagated and fully characterized as far as histology, immunohistochemistry of epithelial and high-grade serous-specific markers and presence of TP53 and BRCA1/2 mutations.

Copy number variations (CNV) analysis and Whole Exome Sequencing (WES) were carried out of 12 PDX lines derived from naïve metastatic high-grade serous epithelial ovarian carcinomas. We studied non-synonymous mutations with allele frequencies ≥0.1. Only mutations in cancer genes listed in databases were further analyzed. SNPdb allowed ruling out polymorphisms. SIFT and PROVEAN softwares predicted deleterious or damaging effects onto the protein sequences. DGIdb helped selecting actionable genes.

We identified mutations in 1-4 cancer genes in 8/12 PDX lines. In one PDX line, a possibly loss-of-function mutation of the PIK3R1 gene (encoding the p85alpha regulatory subunit of PI3K) had an allele frequency=0.9 in early and late passages. Moreover, in two micro-dissected FFPE samples of the source tumor this mutation had an allele frequency nearly identical to that of the mutated TP53. Hence, PIK3R1W624R could be a trunk mutation in the PDX line and possibly in the human counterpart.

Treatment options were assayed ex-vivo, on short-term cultures of PDTCs of the PIK3R1W624R PDX line. Buparlisib, a pan-class I PI3K inhibitor, showed the ability to block proliferation of PDTCs and the growth in vivo of PDXs in regression preclinical trial. These data proofed-the-concept that a PDX-based pipeline is able to unveil actionable pathways for the treatment of advanced/metastatic ovarian cancer.

Citation Format: Martina Olivero, Jessica Erriquez, Maddalena Arigoni, Sonia Capellero, Concetta D'Ambrosio, Gloria Mittica, Fulvio Borella, Dionyssios Katsaros, Silvana Privitera, Enrico Berrino, Tiziana Venesio, Giorgio Valabrega, Raffaele Calogero, Maria Flavia Di Renzo. Identification of actionable cancer genes and treatment options for metastatic ovarian carcinomas using patient-derived xenografts and PDX-derived tumor cells [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2018; 2018 Apr 14-18; Chicago, IL. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2018;78(13 Suppl):Abstract nr 3102.