Central Animal Division

Toshio Imai, Mami Takahashi, Tetsuya Ishikawa, Naoaki Uchiya, Rikako Ishigamori, Yukiko Nakamura, Makiko Saitou, Yoshinori Ikarashi, Masashi Yasuda, Manabu Tsuchida, Ayami Kawashima, Satoshi Ikeda, Junichi Zukeyama, Shiho Ozawa, Yudai Seki, Karin Miura, Shun Ito, Yukiko Sudo

Introduction

The important role of the Central Animal Division is health management of experimental animals and maintenance of the animal experimentation facility. Some researchers and technical staff also act for several support services, which are provided based on their biological skills, such as reproductive technologies for animal cleaning / embryo-sperm preservation, pathological analysis of mouse phenotypes and establishment of expandable cells / xenograft transplantable models from clinical cancer tissues (PDX models).

Our team and what we do

Animal models are essential not only for basic cancer research but also for translational research (TR) fields. We willingly contribute to establish useful animal models including genetically engineered mice (GEM) for basic cancer research, PDX models for TR, and to analyze their molecular details.

Research activities

To explore intrinsic and environmental carcinogenic factors and clarify their molecular mechanisms in human, we establish and improve genetically-modified animal carcinogenesis models and analyze their phenotypes under the conditions of environmental factor loaded. For example, heterozygous p53 knockout mice of BALB/c background, in which Prkdc is diminished in mammary tissue, was found to develop mammary carcinomas with and without hormone receptor expression, and we analyze the effects of a high-fat diet to carcinogenesis. As for the TR field, we established unique PDX models, e.g., an EGFR-mutation-harboring lung adenocarcinoma model, which was found to be highly metastatic to the lung, and rare cancers including soft tissue tumors.

Education

We contribute to organize annual training sessions for researchers and technical experts on animal experiments. In addition, technical trainees are received for skill acquirement on animal experiment and mouse phenotype analysis.

Future prospects

Research approaches using immune deficient/severely immune-deficient mice have become increasingly important these several years, and microbiological controls of the animal experimentation facility should become more strictly controlled. For the development of research fields to evaluate molecular-targeted agents for lung, colorectal, and other cancers, and to conquer rare cancers/refractory cancers, establishment of their PDX models should be systematically organized.

List of papers published in 2016

Journal

1.Nakao H, Wakai K, Ishii N, Kobayashi Y, Ito K, Yoneda M, Mori M, Nojima M, Kimura Y, Endo T, Matsuyama M, Ishii H, Ueno M, Kuruma S, Egawa N, Matsuo K, Hosono S, Ohkawa S, Nakamura K, Tamakoshi A, Takahashi M, Shimada K, Nishiyama T, Kikuchi S, Lin Y. Associations between polymorphisms in folate-metabolizing genes and pancreatic cancer risk in Japanese subjects. BMC Gastroenterol, 16:83, 2016

2.Hori M, Onaya H, Hiraoka N, Yamaji T, Kobayashi H, Takahashi M, Mutoh M, Shimada K, Nakagama H. Evaluation of the degree of pancreatic fatty infiltration by area-based assessment of CT images: comparison with histopathology-based and CT attenuation index-based assessments. Jpn J Radiol, 34:667-676, 2016

3.Hori M, Mutoh M, Imai T, Nakagama H, Takahashi M. Possible involvement of pancreatic fatty infiltration in pancreatic carcinogenesis. JOP. J Pancreas, 17:166-175, 2016

4.Seno A, Kasai T, Ikeda M, Vaidyanath A, Masuda J, Mizutani A, Murakami H, Ishikawa T, Seno M. Characterization of gene expression patterns among artificially developed cancer stem cells using spherical self-organizing map. Cancer Inform, 15:163-178, 2016