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  • Activating FGFR1 mutations ...
    Welander, Jenny; Lysiak, Malgorzata; Brauckhoff, Michael; Brunaud, Laurent; Söderkvist, Peter; Gimm, Oliver

    World journal of surgery, 2018, Letnik: 42, Številka: 2
    Journal Article

    Pheochromocytomas are neuroendocrine tumors of the adrenal glands that cause hypertension. More than a third of the cases are associated with hereditary mutations in a growing list of susceptibility genes, some of which are also somatically altered in sporadic pheochromocytomas. However, for the majority of sporadic pheochromocytomas, a genetic explanation is still lacking. Here we investigated the genomic landscape of sporadic pheochromocytomas with whole-exome sequencing of 16 paired tumor and normal DNA samples, and discovered on average 33 non-silent somatic mutations per tumor. One of the recurrently mutated genes was FGFR1 , encoding the fibroblast growth factor receptor 1, which was recently revealed as an oncogene in pilocytic astrocytoma and childhood glioblastoma. Including a subsequent analysis of a larger cohort, activating FGFR1   mutations were detected in three of 80 sporadic pheochromocytomas (3.8%). Gene expression microarray profiling showed that these tumors clustered with NF1- RET- and HRAS-mutated pheochromocytomas, indicating activation of the MAPK and PI3K-AKT signal transduction pathways. The results advance our biological understanding of pheochromocytoma and suggest that somatic FGFR1 activation is an important event in a subset of these tumors.