The sensitivity of massively-parallel sequencing has confirmed that most cancers are oligoclonal, with subpopulations of neoplastic cells harboring distinct mutations. A fine resolution view of this ...clonal architecture provides insight into tumor heterogeneity, evolution, and treatment response, all of which may have clinical implications. Single tumor analysis already contributes to understanding these phenomena. However, cryptic subclones are frequently revealed by additional patient samples (e.g., collected at relapse or following treatment), indicating that accurately characterizing a tumor requires analyzing multiple samples from the same patient. To address this need, we present SciClone, a computational method that identifies the number and genetic composition of subclones by analyzing the variant allele frequencies of somatic mutations. We use it to detect subclones in acute myeloid leukemia and breast cancer samples that, though present at disease onset, are not evident from a single primary tumor sample. By doing so, we can track tumor evolution and identify the spatial origins of cells resisting therapy.
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DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
TP53 mutated acute myeloid leukemia (AML) responds poorly to chemotherapy and has a short overall survival rate with a median of 5–9 months. Poor outcomes in TP53 mutated AML following chemotherapy ...have been observed and treatment options remain limited, although the presence of TP53 mutations alone should not be a barrier to therapy. Decitabine is emerging as an alternative treatment option for patients with TP53 mutated AML, although the agent has not been associated with deep molecular remissions and requires additional consolidation. The clinical and genomic characteristics of TP53 mutated AML are reviewed in this paper.
The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) has used the latest sequencing and analysis methods to identify somatic variants across thousands of tumours. Here we present data and analytical results for point ...mutations and small insertions/deletions from 3,281 tumours across 12 tumour types as part of the TCGA Pan-Cancer effort. We illustrate the distributions of mutation frequencies, types and contexts across tumour types, and establish their links to tissues of origin, environmental/carcinogen influences, and DNA repair defects. Using the integrated data sets, we identified 127 significantly mutated genes from well-known (for example, mitogen-activated protein kinase, phosphatidylinositol-3-OH kinase, Wnt/β-catenin and receptor tyrosine kinase signalling pathways, and cell cycle control) and emerging (for example, histone, histone modification, splicing, metabolism and proteolysis) cellular processes in cancer. The average number of mutations in these significantly mutated genes varies across tumour types; most tumours have two to six, indicating that the number of driver mutations required during oncogenesis is relatively small. Mutations in transcriptional factors/regulators show tissue specificity, whereas histone modifiers are often mutated across several cancer types. Clinical association analysis identifies genes having a significant effect on survival, and investigations of mutations with respect to clonal/subclonal architecture delineate their temporal orders during tumorigenesis. Taken together, these results lay the groundwork for developing new diagnostics and individualizing cancer treatment.
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DOBA, IJS, IZUM, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
DNMT3A mutations occur in ∼25% of acute myeloid leukemia (AML) patients. The most common mutation, DNMT3AR882H, has dominant negative activity that reduces DNA methylation activity by ∼80% in vitro. ...To understand the contribution of DNMT3A-dependent methylation to leukemogenesis, we performed whole-genome bisulfite sequencing of primary leukemic and non-leukemic cells in patients with or without DNMT3AR882 mutations. Non-leukemic hematopoietic cells with DNMT3AR882H displayed focal methylation loss, suggesting that hypomethylation antedates AML. Although virtually all AMLs with wild-type DNMT3A displayed CpG island hypermethylation, this change was not associated with gene silencing and was essentially absent in AMLs with DNMT3AR882 mutations. Primary hematopoietic stem cells expanded with cytokines were hypermethylated in a DNMT3A-dependent manner, suggesting that hypermethylation may be a response to, rather than a cause of, cellular proliferation. Our findings suggest that hypomethylation is an initiating phenotype in AMLs with DNMT3AR882, while DNMT3A-dependent CpG island hypermethylation is a consequence of AML progression.
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•DNMT3AR882H causes focal hypomethylation in non-leukemic human hematopoietic cells•DNMT3AR882 causes focal methylation loss and attenuates hypermethylation in AML•Abnormal CpG island hypermethylation in AML is mediated by DNMT3A•CpG island hypermethylation occurs in normal cells, independent of gene silencing
Analysis of patient-derived samples shows that CpG island hypermethylation is a consequence of AML progression rather than a driver of transcriptional gene silencing during leukemogenesis.
Several genetic alterations characteristic of leukemia and lymphoma have been detected in the blood of individuals without apparent hematological malignancies. The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) provides ...a unique resource for comprehensive discovery of mutations and genes in blood that may contribute to the clonal expansion of hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells. Here, we analyzed blood-derived sequence data from 2,728 individuals from TCGA and discovered 77 blood-specific mutations in cancer-associated genes, the majority being associated with advanced age. Remarkably, 83% of these mutations were from 19 leukemia and/or lymphoma-associated genes, and nine were recurrently mutated (DNMT3A, TET2, JAK2, ASXL1, TP53, GNAS, PPM1D, BCORL1 and SF3B1). We identified 14 additional mutations in a very small fraction of blood cells, possibly representing the earliest stages of clonal expansion in hematopoietic stem cells. Comparison of these findings to mutations in hematological malignancies identified several recurrently mutated genes that may be disease initiators. Our analyses show that the blood cells of more than 2% of individuals (5-6% of people older than 70 years) contain mutations that may represent premalignant events that cause clonal hematopoietic expansion.
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DOBA, IJS, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Hematopoietic clones harboring specific mutations may expand over time. However, it remains unclear how different cellular stressors influence this expansion. Here we characterize clonal ...hematopoiesis after two different cellular stressors: cytotoxic therapy and hematopoietic transplantation. Cytotoxic therapy results in the expansion of clones carrying mutations in DNA damage response genes, including TP53 and PPM1D. Analyses of sorted populations show that these clones are typically multilineage and myeloid-biased. Following autologous transplantation, most clones persist with stable chimerism. However, DNMT3A mutant clones often expand, while PPM1D mutant clones often decrease in size. To assess the leukemic potential of these expanded clones, we genotyped 134 t-AML/t-MDS samples. Mutations in non-TP53 DNA damage response genes are infrequent in t-AML/t-MDS despite several being commonly identified after cytotoxic therapy. These data suggest that different hematopoietic stressors promote the expansion of distinct long-lived clones, carrying specific mutations, whose leukemic potential depends partially on the mutations they harbor.
Therapy-related acute myeloid leukaemia (t-AML) and therapy-related myelodysplastic syndrome (t-MDS) are well-recognized complications of cytotoxic chemotherapy and/or radiotherapy. There are several ...features that distinguish t-AML from de novo AML, including a higher incidence of TP53 mutations, abnormalities of chromosomes 5 or 7, complex cytogenetics and a reduced response to chemotherapy. However, it is not clear how prior exposure to cytotoxic therapy influences leukaemogenesis. In particular, the mechanism by which TP53 mutations are selectively enriched in t-AML/t-MDS is unknown. Here, by sequencing the genomes of 22 patients with t-AML, we show that the total number of somatic single-nucleotide variants and the percentage of chemotherapy-related transversions are similar in t-AML and de novo AML, indicating that previous chemotherapy does not induce genome-wide DNA damage. We identified four cases of t-AML/t-MDS in which the exact TP53 mutation found at diagnosis was also present at low frequencies (0.003-0.7%) in mobilized blood leukocytes or bone marrow 3-6 years before the development of t-AML/t-MDS, including two cases in which the relevant TP53 mutation was detected before any chemotherapy. Moreover, functional TP53 mutations were identified in small populations of peripheral blood cells of healthy chemotherapy-naive elderly individuals. Finally, in mouse bone marrow chimaeras containing both wild-type and Tp53(+/-) haematopoietic stem/progenitor cells (HSPCs), the Tp53(+/-) HSPCs preferentially expanded after exposure to chemotherapy. These data suggest that cytotoxic therapy does not directly induce TP53 mutations. Rather, they support a model in which rare HSPCs carrying age-related TP53 mutations are resistant to chemotherapy and expand preferentially after treatment. The early acquisition of TP53 mutations in the founding HSPC clone probably contributes to the frequent cytogenetic abnormalities and poor responses to chemotherapy that are typical of patients with t-AML/t-MDS.
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DOBA, IJS, IZUM, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBMB, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK