PATIENT VALIDATION CORE FACILITY (CORE A) PROJECT SUMMARY The Patient Validation Core Facility (CFA) will curate an extensive array of human-derived and mouse-derived tissue samples in all pertinent forms, as well as clinical outcomes-linked specimens and in silico genomic and epigenomic datasets. These will serve each and every research project and interact importantly with Core B. While work in model systems, such as the HS-SY-II cell line CRISPR-engineered to tag SS18 with HA (RP2), or the conditional SS18SSX mice (RP3), will provide essentially unlimited supplies of material as a basis for both discovery research and functional experimental work in this research program, it is critical to confirm that our findings remain relevant to patients. Thus, major results will all need to be validated in human tumor materials. These include (1) a well characterized panel of human synovial sarcoma cell lines, (2) accumulated in silico primary human tumor data at the DNA, RNA, and epigenetic levels, (3) extensive formalin-fixed tissues, including large, already-assembled tissue microarray series, and (4) frozen tumor tissue surgical samples including material that has been explanted as patient-derived xenografts. Work for CFA will primarily be based at the Genetic Pathology Evaluation Centre of the University of British Columbia www.gpec.ubc.ca under the direction of clinician-scientist pathologist Torsten Nielsen, MD, PhD, and drawing on established collaborative connections with the members of the SS18-SSX Biology in Synovial Sarcoma Research Cancer Team to share resources for validation and translational work arising from the Research Projects (RPs). Objectives: ? Authenticate, maintain, distribute, and engineer a panel of human synovial sarcoma cell line models, representing both SSX1 and SSX2 disease. ? Assemble, curate and analyze human synovial sarcoma data for in silico validation studies ? Conduct validation on large numbers of patients with linkage to clinical features ? Confirm epigenomic profiles and protein-protein interactions in fresh-frozen human tumors.
