Annual Report 2020
Central Animal Division
Toshio Imai, Mami Takahashi, Mie Naruse, Rikako Ishigamori, Ruri Nakanishi, Yurika Shiotani, Makiko Saito, Yukino Machida, Noriyuki Kimura, Junichi Zukeyama, Hiroyuki Hayashida, Saori Kobayashi, Sakura Ueki, Chitose Nishizawa, Takeru Sato, Hisato Ono, Haruka Taniguchi
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 analyze their molecular details.
Research activities
As for PDX models, we evaluate genetic and/or phenotypic changes during their 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 dramatically change by their passage. For PDXs derived from endometrial cancers, in contrast, morphological and immunohistochemical characteristics have been demonstrated to gradually change by the passage. We recently established a basis for culturing PDX-derived 2D cell line/3D organoids, which can be used for screening/biomarker searching of ant-cancer drugs.
Education
We contribute to organizing the annual training sessions for researchers and technical experts on animal experiments. We also accept technical trainees for the acquisition of 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 2020
Journal
1. 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
2. Terasaki M, Takahashi S, Nishimura R, Kubota A, Kojima H, Ohta T, Hamada J, Kuramitsu Y, Maeda H, Miyashita K, Takahashi M, Mutoh M. A Marine Carotenoid of Fucoxanthinol Accelerates the Growth of Human Pancreatic Cancer PANC-1 Cells. Nutr Cancer, 1-16, 2021
3. Naruse M, Ochiai M, Sekine S, Taniguchi H, Yoshida T, Ichikawa H, Sakamoto H, Kubo T, Matsumoto K, Ochiai A, Imai T. Re-expression of REG family and DUOXs genes in CRC organoids by co-culturing with CAFs. Sci Rep, 11:2077, 2021
4. Nakajima K, Ino Y, Yamazaki-Itoh R, Naito C, Shimasaki M, Takahashi M, Esaki M, Nara S, Kishi Y, Shimada K, Hiraoka N. IAP inhibitor, Embelin increases VCAM-1 levels on the endothelium, producing lymphocytic infiltration and antitumor immunity. Oncoimmunology, 9:1838812, 2020