Next generation sequencing profiling experimental circulating tumor cells-derived metastatic variants [micro-environment]

Hematogenous metastasis is initiated by a subset of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) shed from primary or metastatic tumors into the blood circulation. Thus, CTCs provide a unique patient biopsy resource to decipher the cellular subpopulations that initiate metastasis and their molecular properties. However, one crucial question is whether CTCs derived from patients recapitulate human metastatic disease in an animal model. Here, we show that CTC lines established from breast cancer patients are capable of generating metastases in mice with a pattern recapitulating most major organs from corresponding patients. To investigate the tumor microenvironment changes in different metastases, we used RNA-seq to analyze expression changes in stromal cells after tumor formation in the brain, lung and bone microenvironments relative to control stromal cells from tumor free mice. Expression changes in stromal cells after CTC-derived tumor formation in the brain (3 samples), lung (7 samples), and bone (13 samples) microenvironments relative to control stromal cells from tumor free mice (3 replicates for bone and 2 replicates for lung and brain)