GSE158789
Functional Genomics Identifies Metabolic Vulnerabilities in Pancreatic Cancer [CRISPR Screen]
Purpose: Modeling microenvironmental influences in cell culture has been challenging, and technical limitations have hampered the comprehensive study of tumor-specific metabolism in vivo. To systematically interrogate metabolic vulnerabilities in PDA, we employed parallel CRISPR-Cas9 genetic screens using both in vivo and in vitro model systems. Methods: A custom library of lentiviral vectors encoding ~18,000 sgRNAs targeting ~3,000 mouse metabolic genes and performed CRISPR-Cas9 screens using a C/57BL6 (B6) mouse pancreatic cancer cell line derived from a KrasG12D-driven autochthonous PDA model. After transduction and selection, parallel screens were performed by in vitro passage or tumor implantation subcutaneously into the flanks of syngeneic hosts. Genomic DNA was then harvaested in vitro after 7 passages (21 days in culture) and in vivo 21 days after implantation. Results: This work revealed striking overlap of in vivo metabolic dependencies with those in vitro, validating that standard 2D culture conditions are a reliable system for studying cancer metabolism. Moreover, we identified that intercellular nutrient sharing can mask cancer dependencies in pooled screening experiments, highlighting an important limitation of this approach to study tumor metabolism Conclusions:Our work demonstrates the power of genetic screening approaches to define the compendium of in vivo metabolic dependencies in PDA and highlights critical metabolic pathways that may have therapeutic utility. Overall design: 42 Total samples. 3 Total conditions. 3 sets of replicates for corresponding screen.