Microenvironment alters epigenetic and gene expression profiles in Swarm rat chondrosarcoma tumors

Hamm CA, Stevens JW, Xie H, Vanin EF, Morcuende JA, Abdulkawy H, Seftor EA, Sredni ST, Bischof JM, Wang D, Malchenko S, Bonaldo Mde F, Casavant TL, Hendrix MJ, Soares MB · BMC Cancer

Transplantation site changed the tumours' methylation and expression profiles, and functional assays pointed to thymosin β4 as having a role in chondrosarcoma metastasis — the one place the tumour literature and cartilage tissue meet.

Population

Swarm rat chondrosarcoma tumours transplanted to different anatomical sites

Intervention

None — transcriptomic and methylation profiling with follow-up functional assays

Comparator

Tumours at different transplantation sites; control tissue

Limitations

The authors call the functional follow-up preliminary; chondrosarcoma is a malignancy of cartilage cells, not a model of cartilage repair, so this constrains no claim about a healthy joint.