Retinoic acid promotes differentiation of WiT49‐ but not of CCG99‐11 Wilms tumour cells

BACKGROUND: Most children with Wilms tumour are successfully treated with multidrug chemotherapy and surgery. These treatments cause severe side effects for the patients, an issue that needs to be addressed by exploring other treatment options with less or no side effects. One option is to complement current therapies with agents that could potentially induce tumour cell differentiation, for example retinoic acid (RA). AIMS: To facilitate quick assessment of an agent's effect on Wilms tumour differentiation by a rapid in vitro model system. METHODS AND RESULTS: Here WiT49 and CCG99‐11 Wilms tumour cells were treated with 10 μM RA for 72 h or 9 days. Cultured cells were scraped off from Petri dishes, pelleted and embedded in paraffin in the same way as clinical tumour specimens are preserved. Cell morphology and differentiation were evaluated by analyses of haematoxylin eosin (H&E) and immunohistochemical stainings. Based on H&E, WT1 and CKAE1/3 stainings, RA treatment induced further epithelial differentiation of WiT49 cells, whereas there was no sign of induced maturation in CCG99‐11 cells. Ki67 staining showed that RA inhibited cell proliferation in both cell lines. CONCLUSIONS: Our study shows that in vitro culturing of WiT49 and CCG99‐11 cells, followed by pelleting and paraffin embedding of cell pellets, could aid in a quick evaluation of potential differentiating agents against Wilms tumour. In addition, our results strengthen previous results that retinoic acid could be a potential complement to regular Wilms tumour treatment.