Journal: bioRxiv
Article Title: Cell-of-Origin, not Oncogenic Effect, Determines Desmoplastic Immune Exclusion in KRAS-Driven Liver Cancer
doi: 10.64898/2026.03.24.711280
Figure Lengend Snippet: Cell-of-origin is the dominant determinant of transcriptional identity in Trp53-deleted , Kras G12D -mutant liver cancer organoids. (A) Messenger RNA expression of fibroblast activation markers in mHSCs treated for 24 hours with CCM from chol-or hep-derived organoids (WT or PK). (B) Schematic of multi-factorial transcriptome analysis in chol and hep organoids. Gene expression was modelled with lineage (chol vs hep), oncogenic effect (PK vs WT), and their interaction to identify lineage-specific PK effects. (C) Principal component analysis (PCA) plot of transcriptomes from indicated lines. Shown are PC1 (79.2% variance) versus PC3 (3.9%), which separate samples primarily by cell lineage and, to a lesser extent, oncogenic activation. (D) Distribution of variance in normalized expression of DEGs explained by lineage and oncogenic effect shown as violin plot with integrated box plot. For each gene, we fit a linear model on normalized counts with lineage, oncogenic effect, their interaction (lineage × oncogenic effect), and mouse strain as predictors. Residuals capture remaining variation. DEGs are the union across the four contrasts: chol-PK vs chol-WT, chol-PK vs hep-PK, chol-WT vs hep-WT, and hep-PK vs hep-WT. (E) Scatter plot showing upregulated DEGs in chol-PK organoids from multi-factorial analysis. Dot color indicates the significance of the interaction effect (adjusted p-value), and dot size reflects the significance of PK versus WT comparison in chol-orgs (adjusted p-value). (F) Gene Set Enrichment Analysis (GSEA) of Hallmark pathways specifically enriched in the lineage-dependent PK effect. The pathways selected for cancer-related cell cycle and oncogenic signaling, tumor-stroma crosstalk, and tumor-immune and inflammation with positive enrichment (i.e. PK effects stronger in chol-orgs) are shown.
Article Snippet: The Lenti-CRISPR-sgRNA( Trp53 ), pBabe- Kras G12D , or Lenti-luciferase-P2A-Neo plasmid (Addgene #105621) was co-transfected with packaging plasmid psPAX2 and pMD2.G (both from PlasmidFactory GmbH & Co. KG, Bielefeld, Germany) into HEK293T cells by TransIT LT1 transfection reagent according to the manufacturer’s instructions (Mirus Bio, Madison, WI, USA).
Techniques: Mutagenesis, RNA Expression, Activation Assay, Derivative Assay, Gene Expression, Expressing, Comparison