Human embryonic stem cell-derived neural crest model for neuroblastoma

Neuroblastoma is a common childhood malignant tumor of neural crest origin with remarkable heterogeneity in outcomes. Amplification of the oncogene MYCN is strongly associated with highly malignant behaviour and poor prognosis. Here, we used human ESC-derived neural crest model to recapitulate the initiation of MYCN-driven neuroblastoma and to identify MYCN downstream effectors. Our results show that induced deregulation of MYCN in human neural crest progenitor cells is sufficient to induce tumors that recapitulate the pathological and molecular features of human MYCN-amplified neuroblastoma(MNA-NB). By using this platform, we are able to identify a group of 28 genes that are associated with MYCN expression level only in MNA-NB. RNA-sequencing of control NCSCs and NCSCs+MYCN