In vivo co-cultures of colitis-associated cancer epithelial organoids alone or with matched proximal colon fibroblasts or with matched colitis-associated cancer fibroblasts

The pathogenosis of colitis-associated cancer is unclear. These studies use single nuclear RNA-sequencing on human samples to understand the dominant contributions of cell types to the pathogenesis from histologically normal colon, to colitis, to colitis-associated cancer. Overall design: Single nuclear RNA-sequencing on optimum cutting tissue preserved human colon samples spanning normal colon, proximal and distal colitc colon, and colitis-associated cancer was conducted. Cell types were annotated based on the dominant categories of epithelia, immune, and non-immune stroma. To further interrogate the interactions between the epithelia and non-immune stromal fibroblasts, both in vitro and in vivo co-cultures were conducted, then subjected to single nuclear RNA-sequencing.