Development of a New Human Model of Lung Squamous Cell Carcinoma Progression

肺鳞状细胞癌(LUSC)是一种破坏性疾病，约占英国所有癌症死亡率的5%，与吸烟密切相关，缺乏针对性的治疗。早期发现LUSC提供了治疗成功的最佳机会，因为这些患者有资格接受根治性手术(60%的5年总存活率)。然而，75%的LUSC患者被诊断为晚期疾病，并接受了化疗和最近的免疫治疗，但治疗效果有限(6%的5年总存活率)。这些令人沮丧的数字突显了改进LUSC药物的必要性。这只能通过开发更具创新性和雄心勃勃的研究模型来实现，这些模型反映了LUSC的遗传复杂性，并概括了从癌前阶段到浸润性癌症的进展。不幸的是，推动这一进展的机制尚不清楚，这阻碍了开发这些急需的与患者相关的模式的努力。LUSC的基因组很复杂，并且在不同的患者之间存在差异，但仔细观察可以发现，一些基因改变发生在大多数患者中。此外，低频率的基因改变通常以相同的细胞过程为目标，并在肿瘤中出现，遵循一种反复出现的时间顺序，从而产生一系列的“遗传阶段”。这些共性可以被用来设计更相关的土地利用/服务的相关模型。然而，由于涉及的基因数量和在患者中发现的遗传多样性，在老鼠身上进行这种建模工作将需要大量的动物队列。我们癌症生物学家必须努力避免在小鼠的生命中付出这样的代价，并在尽可能多的翻译应用中找到替代动物的策略。人类基底细胞(HbCs)是LUSC的起源细胞，可以很容易地在体外培养，更有可能更好地反映人类细胞生物学。因此，HBCs是一种有吸引力的通用系统来研究这种疾病，并在翻译LUSC研究中取代小鼠。在这项工作中，我们打算通过改造HBCs来重现LUSC患者的遗传阶段和多样性。在遵循这一策略时，我的目标是建立一个LUSC进展模型，最好地概括LUSC癌前阶段和侵袭性LUSC阶段的频谱，以取代小鼠模型。这个项目的第一个目标是通过基因工程来重现在患者中观察到的一系列遗传阶段。改变的选择将基于它们的高频率和在重要的LUSC途径中的已知作用。第二个目标是分析细胞在每个遗传阶段的变化，包括侵袭性、细胞增殖和组织结构的变化。最后一个目标是研究基因表达、免疫调节因子和肿瘤内异质性的变化。在完成验证阶段后，我们的目标是获得一个全面的数据集，提供推动LUSC进展的最完整的生物变化知识，以及一个易于处理的LUSC模型，以扩大我们的临床前研究机会。这种建模策略最具创新性的方面是a)使用人类细胞而不是小鼠模型，b)重述遗传阶段，旨在将肿瘤进化纳入癌症建模策略，以及c)强调癌前阶段。这些功能将扩大我们以阶段依赖的方式研究LUSC生物学特定领域的能力，这是使用现有的临床前模型无法进行的，同时避免了小鼠和人类在肺部生物学方面的重要差异。在完成模型的验证后，我们打算专注于癌前阶段的生物学、新的癌症易感性以及免疫微环境中与阶段相关的变化。这些研究领域将加快新的早期检测方法、新的治疗方式的开发，并改进现有的方法。

Lung squamous cell carcinoma (LUSC) is a devastating disease which accounts for approximately 5% of all cancer mortality in the UK, is strongly associated with smoking and lacks targeted therapies. Detecting early stage LUSC provides the best chance of therapeutic success as these patients are eligible for curative surgery (60% 5-year overall survival). However, 75% of LUSC patients are diagnosed with advanced disease and are treated with chemotherapy and, more recently, immunotherapy but with limited therapeutic benefit (6% 5-year overall survival).These dismal figures highlight the need to improve LUSC medicine. This can only be achieved by developing more innovative and ambitious research models that reflect the genetic complexity of LUSC and recapitulate progression from premalignant stages to invasive cancer. Unfortunately, the mechanisms driving this progression remain unclear and this hinders efforts to develop these much-needed patient-relevant models.The genomes of LUSC are complex and differ among patients, but a closer look shows that some genetic alterations occur in most patients. Additionally, low-frequency genetic alterations often target the same cellular processes and arise in the tumour following a recurrent temporal order that gives rise to a series of 'genetic stages'. These commonalities can be exploited to design more relevant models of LUSC. However, carrying out this modelling effort in mice would require large cohorts of animals due to the number of genes involved and the genetic diversity found in patients. We cancer biologists must try to avoid this cost in mouse lives and find alternative strategies to replace animals in LUSC research in as many translational applications as possible.Human basal cells (HBCs) are the cell-of-origin of LUSC, can be easily cultured in-vitro and are more likely to reflect better the human cell biology. Therefore, HBCs are an attractive and versatile system to investigate this disease and replace mice in translational LUSC studies. In this work, we intend to engineer HBCs to reproduce the genetic stages and the diversity found in LUSC patients. In following this strategy, I aim to build a model of LUSC progression that best recapitulates the spectrum of premalignant and invasive LUSC stages to replace mouse models.The first objective of this project is to genetically-engineer HBCs to reproduce the series of genetic stages observed in patients. The selection of alterations will be based on their high frequency and known role in important LUSC pathways. The second objective will be to analyse the cellular changes in each genetic stage including invasiveness, cell proliferation and changes to tissue architecture. The last objective will be to investigate changes in gene expression, immuno-modulatory factors, and intra-tumour heterogeneity. On completing the validation stage, we aim to have acquired a comprehensive dataset providing the most complete knowledge of the biological changes driving LUSC progression as well as a tractable LUSC model to expand our preclinical research opportunities. The most innovative aspects of this modelling strategy are a) the use of human cells instead of mouse models, b) the recapitulation of genetic stages that aims to incorporate tumour evolution into cancer modelling strategies and c) the emphasis on premalignant stages. These features will broaden our capabilities to investigate specific areas of LUSC biology in a stage-dependent manner that cannot be undertaken using existing preclinical models, while avoiding the important differences in lung biology between mouse and human. After completing the validation of the model, we intend to focus on the biology of premalignant stages, new cancer vulnerabilities and stage-dependent changes in the immune microenvironment. These research areas will accelerate the development of new early detection methods, novel therapeutic modalities, and the improvement of existing ones.