Functional Genomics Identifies Metabolic Vulnerabilities in Pancreatic Cancer [RNA-Seq]

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: 2D culture collected 3 days after plating grown in DMEM, 10%fbs, 1%p/s. 3D culture collected 3 days after plating grown in DMEM, 10%fbs, 1% p/s, 5% matrigel. Tumors were collected from orthotopic injections collected at endpoint of experiment. 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: 2D culture collected 3 days after plating grown in DMEM, 10%fbs, 1%p/s. 3D culture collected 3 days after plating grown in DMEM, 10%fbs, 1% p/s, 5% matrigel. Tumors were collected from orthotopic injections collected at endpoint of experiment.