Gene expression profiling of Dox-activable K-ras mutation in human primary bronchial epithelial cell line

We constructed a primary lung cell model to permit regulated expression of KRASG12D. To do this, we leveraged a non-transformed, immortalized, human primary bronchial epithelial cell line (HBEC; hTert, CDK4, TP53 knockdown) that remains anchorage dependent and do not develop tumors when implanted into mice. We next modified these cells by stably integrating a regulatable KRASG12D allele, iKRASG12D, such that physiological expression of mutant KRAS is activated upon addition of doxycycline. The HBEC-iKRAS (WT) cell line and HBEC-iKRASG12D (MUT) cell line were propagated with or without Doxycycline (500ng/ml) respectively. RNA profiling of HBEC-iKRASG12D and HBEC-iKRASWT cells revealed widespread changes for HBECs harboring the activated KRAS allele in the presence of Dox. Within the KRASG12D-induced genes, the Molecular Signatures Database identified the oncogenic RAS signature as a top-enriched gene set. Upregulation of Ras signaling in Dox-treated HBEC-iKRASG12D cells was also supported by a significant overlap with a KRAS signature previously characterized by Singh et al.

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Grzeskowiak CL, Kundu ST, Mo X, Ivanov AA, Zagorodna O, Lu H, Chapple RH, Tsang YH, Moreno D, Mosqueda M, Eterovic K, Fradette JJ, Ahmad S, Chen F, Chong Z, Chen K, Creighton CJ, Fu H, Mills GB, Gibbons DL, Scott KL