A lineage-tracing tool to map the fate of hypoxic tumour cells

Detection of Hypoxia in Cancer Models: Significance, Challenges, and Advances

The rapid proliferation of cancer cells combined with deficient vessels cause regions of nutrient and O₂ deprivation in solid tumors. Some cancer cells can adapt to these extreme hypoxic conditions and persist to promote cancer progression. Intratumoral hypoxia has been consistently associated with a worse patient prognosis. In vitro, 3D models of spheroids or organoids can recapitulate spontaneous O₂ gradients in solid tumors. Likewise, in vivo murine models of cancer reproduce the physiological levels of hypoxia that have been measured in human tumors. Given the potential clinical importance of hypoxia in cancer progression, there is an increasing need to design methods to measure O₂ concentrations. O₂ levels can be directly measured with needle-type probes, both optical and electrochemical. Alternatively, indirect, noninvasive approaches have been optimized, and include immunolabeling endogenous or exogenous markers. Fluorescent, phosphorescent, and luminescent reporters have also been employed experimentally to provide dynamic measurements of O₂ in live cells or tumors. In medical imaging, modalities such as MRI and PET are often the method of choice. This review provides a comparative overview of the main methods utilized to detect hypoxia in cell culture and preclinical models of cancer.

Cell Competition Boosts Clonal Evolution and Hypoxic Selection in Cancer

The comparison of fitness between cells leads to the elimination of less competent cells in the presence of more competent neighbors via cell competition (CC). This phenomenon has been linked with several cancer-related genes and thus may play an important role in cancer. Various processes are involved in the regulation of tumor initiation and growth, including tumor hypoxia, clonal stem cell selection, and immune cell response, all of which have been recently shown to have a potential connection with the mechanisms involved in CC. This review aims to unravel the relation between these processes and competitive cell interactions and how this affects disease progression.

First person – Jenny Vermeer and Jonathan lent

First Person is a series of interviews with the first authors of a selection of papers published in Disease Models & Mechanisms, helping early-career researchers promote themselves alongside their papers. Jenny Vermeer and Jonathan lent are co-first authors on ‘A lineage-tracing tool to map the fate of hypoxic tumour cells’, published in DMM. Jenny conducted the research described in this article while a postdoctoral researcher in the lab of Ruth Muschel at the University of Oxford, Oxford, UK. She is now a project leader in the lab of Miranda van der Lee at Byondis, Nijmegen, The Netherlands, investigating new targets, particularly in cancer, that will lead to novel treatments. Jonathan is a PhD student in the lab of Marc Vooijs at Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands, investigating new cancer targets and testing possible new interventions with a focus on tumour hypoxia.