Although ependymomas – a group of CNS tumours – have a similar appearance in affected patients, who are mostly children, the underlying genetic alterations and clinical outcomes vary depending on the location of the tumour, hindering the development of useful animal models. Using cross-species genomics, Johnson et al. have now broken through this barrier. They compared the transcriptomes of subgroups of human ependymoma with those of spatially and developmentally distinct groups of mouse neural stem cells (NSCs), and found a close match between a subset of human supratentorial ependymomas and embryonic cerebral NSCs from mice with deletion of the tumour suppressor gene Ink4a/Arf. The human tumours were also found to have amplification and/or overex-pression of EphB2, the product of which is involved in numerous developmental processes. When the matched mouse NSCs were transduced with EphB2 and transplanted into the mouse forebrain, tumours that were histologically and molecularly identical to the human ependymomas resulted, with high penetrance. This approach could be used to develop models for other ependymoma subgroups, potentially helping to attain a cure for this often-incurable set of diseases.
Development/DMM Virtual Meeting 2021
Welcoming new Editors to DMM
Editor-in-Chief Liz Patton wants DMM to strengthen its presence in the field of translational biology and to focus on the importance of disease mechanisms, just as much as models. To implement this vision, we are pleased to welcome new Editors Sally Dunwoodie (Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute, Australia), Monkol Lek (Yale School of Medicine, USA) and Rickie Patani (Francis Crick Institute, London, UK) to the team.
Roles of the gut microbiome in colorectal cancer development
Going hand-in-hand, a new Perspective by Foegeding et al. explores the Western diet as a driver of dysbiosis in colorectal cancer while a new Review by Wang et al. focuses on microbiota-driven mechanisms that initiate sporadic colorectal cancer.
preLights – the latest disease modelling preprints
Head over to preLights for the digests of the latest preprints:
Erin McGregor highlights work by Nowicka et al. that suggests a potential connection between mitochondrial dysfunction and neurodegeneration.
Emma Wilson discusses work by Dagra et al., which highlights D2 receptors as a potential target that could be used to alleviate alpha-Synuclein pathology in Parkinson’s disease.
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