Annual Report 2021
Central Animal Division
Toshio Imai, Mami Takahashi, Mie Naruse, Rikako Ishigamori, Ruri Nakanishi, Yurika Shiotani, Makiko Saito, Yukino Machida, Noriyuki Kimura, Saori Kobayashi, Hiroyuki Hayashida, Chitose Nishizawa, Takeru Sato, Hisato Ono, Haruka Taniguchi, Daisuke Nakagawa, Towa Nagai
Introduction
The important role of the Central Animal Division is the health management of experimental animals and the maintenance of animal experimentation facilities. The laboratory animal facility has been certified to be compliant with the “Basic policies for the conduct of animal experimentation in the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare” as stipulated by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare of Japan, based on an assessment by the Center for Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care and Use, Japan Health Sciences Foundation in March, 2020. Some of our researchers and technical staff also act in several support services, which are provided based on their biology skills, such as reproductive technologies for animal cleaning, embryo-sperm preservation, pathological analysis of mouse phenotypes, and establishment of expandable cells and xenograft transplantable models from clinical cancer tissues (PDX models).
The Team and What We Do
Animal models are essential not only for basic cancer research but also for translational research (TR) fields. We contribute to establishing useful animal models, including genetically engineered mice (GEM), for basic cancer research and PDX models for TR, and to analyzing their molecular details.
Research activities
For PDX models, we evaluated genetic and/or phenotypic changes during passages and incubation in mice, as well as the characterizations of proliferative lesions that originated from human lymphocytes. Our members have established PDX models mainly from colorectal, pancreatic and uterine endometrial cancers. The gene mutation/morphological characteristics of PDXs derived from colorectal cancers have been shown to not change dramatically over time. For PDXs derived from endometrial cancers, in contrast, morphological and immunohistochemical characteristics have been demonstrated to gradually change over time. We recently established a basis for culturing PDX-derived 2D cell line/3D organoids, which can be used for screening/biomarker searching for anti-cancer drugs.
Education
We contribute to organizing the annual training sessions for researchers and technical experts on animal experiments. We also accept technical trainees so that they can acquire skills in animal experiments and rat tumor analysis.
Future prospects
Research approaches using immune-deficient/severely immune-deficient mice have become increasingly important over the past few years, and microbiological controls of the animal experimentation facility should become more strictly controlled. We will review and revise the manual for hygiene management in the facility and will continue to keep researchers/technical staff informed about the rules.
List of papers published in 2021
Journal
1. Komiya M, Ishigamori R, Naruse M, Ochiai M, Miyoshi N, Imai T, Totsuka Y. Establishment of Novel Genotoxicity Assay System Using Murine Normal Epithelial Tissue-Derived Organoids. Frontiers in genetics, 12:768781, 2021
2. Naruse M, Ishigamori R, Imai T. The Unique Genetic and Histological Characteristics of DMBA-Induced Mammary Tumors in an Organoid-Based Carcinogenesis Model. Frontiers in genetics, 12:765131, 2021
3. Machida Y, Imai T. Different properties of mammary carcinogenesis induced by two chemical carcinogens, DMBA and PhIP, in heterozygous BALB/c Trp53 knockout mice. Oncology letters, 22:738, 2021
4. Terasaki M, Inoue T, Murase W, Kubota A, Kojima H, Kojoma M, Ohta T, Maeda H, Miyashita K, Mutoh M, Takahashi M. A Fucoxanthinol Induces Apoptosis in a Pancreatic Intraepithelial Neoplasia Cell. Cancer genomics & proteomics, 18:133-146, 2021