Susanne Wells

Fanconi anemia (FA) is a heritable malformation, bone marrow failure and cancer predisposition syndrome that confers an exceptionally high risk of squamous carcinomas. These carcinomas originate in epithelia lining the mouth, proximal esophagus, vulva and anus: their origins are not understood, and no effective ways have been identified to prevent or delay their appearance. Many FA‐associated carcinomas are also therapeutically challenging: they may be multi‐focal and stage‐advanced at diagnosis, and most individuals with FA cannot tolerate standard‐of‐care systemic therapies such as DNA cross‐linking drugs or ionizing radiation due to constitutional DNA damage hypersensitivity. We developed the Fanconi Anemia Cancer Cell Line Resource (FA‐CCLR) to foster new work on the origins, treatment and prevention of FA‐associated carcinomas. The FA‐CCLR consists of Fanconi‐isogenic head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) cell line pairs generated from five individuals with FA‐associated HNSCC, and five individuals with sporadic HNSCC. Sporadic, isogenic HNSCC cell line pairs were generated in parallel with FA patient‐derived isogenic cell line pairs to provide comparable experimental material to use to identify cell and molecular phenotypes driven by germline or somatic loss of Fanconi pathway function, and the subset of these FA‐dependent phenotypes that can be modified, complemented or suppressed. All 10 FANC ‐isogenic cell line pairs are available to academic, non‐profit and industry investigators via the “Fanconi Anemia Research Materials” Resource and Repository at Oregon Health & Sciences University, Portland OR.