14347 results for ""Pennsylvania+German"+ACS+study+'Socius'+open+access"

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• Genentech Colon Cancer Screen

  Identifying and understanding changes in cancer genomes is essential for the development of targeted therapeutics. Here we analyse systematically more than 70 pairs of primary human colon tumours by applying next-generation sequencing to characterize their exomes, transcriptomes and copy-number alterations. We have identified 36,303 protein-altering somatic changes that include several new recurrent mutations in the Wnt pathway gene TCF7L2, chromatin-remodelling genes such as TET2 and TET3 and receptor tyrosine kinases including ERBB3. Our analysis for significantly mutated cancer genes identified 23 candidates, including the cell cycle checkpoint kinase ATM. Copy-number and RNA-seq data analysis identified amplifications and corresponding overexpression of IGF2 in a subset of colon tumours. Furthermore, using RNA-seq data we identified multiple fusion transcripts including recurrent gene fusions involving R-spondin family members RSPO2 and RSPO3 that together occur in 10% of colon tumours. The RSPO fusions were mutually exclusive with APC mutations, indicating that they probably have a role in the activation of Wnt signalling and tumorigenesis. Consistent with this we show that the RSPO fusion proteins were capable of potentiating Wnt signalling. The R-spondin gene fusions and several other gene mutations identified in this study provide new potential opportunities for therapeutic intervention in colon cancer.

  Study EGAS00001000288

• Finding the way towards the eradication of therapy-related myeloid neoplasms

  Therapy-related neoplasms are directly caused by the drugs used to eradicate a previous cancer. It is well known that a subset of drugs designed to kill cancer cells through DNA-damage-induced apoptosis can intrinsically, as secondary effect, cause DNA-damage in other cells, thus inducing a neoplasm. Those neoplasms have especially bad prognosis. Why are these drugs still in use? Because for many diseases we do not have anything better, at the moment. Approximately 0.5-1% of the kids treated for various types of cancers develop a therapy-related myeloid neoplasm (tMN) as a result of the treatment. Despite having the same origin, their prognostic and molecular features are different from the adult ones, and a complete understanding of the pathogenesis of tMN in children is still missing. A total of 84 paediatrics neoplasms have been profiled by either Whole Genome or Whole Exome sequencing by Jason R. Schwartz and his colleagues, in a collaborative effort guided at the St. Jude Children's hospital, in Memphis. They identified a mean of 28 somatic mutations per patient, a number which is significantly bigger than the number of mutations found in paediatrics primary neoplasms, as depicted in the original paper's figure 1b, shown here. Their sequencing data identified that Ras/MAPK pathway mutations, alterations in RUNX1 or TP53, and KMT2A rearrangements as the most frequent drivers of the disease. Clonal evolution analysis (the comparative study of the behaviour of cells harbouring different mutations) highlighted that, unlike in adults’ tMN, there were not pre-existing leukemic clones, and virtually all mutated cells were found arising as a direct consequence of cytotoxic therapy. This represents yet another important difference between adult and paediatric tMN. This important study have been published in Nature communications in February 2021. The sequencing data have been deposited at EGA under the study number EGAS00001004850. Thanks to this, other researchers around the world could re-use it to uncover more information, integrate and validate their studies. Revealing the molecular features underlying the development of cancers is the only way towards the development of new generation targeted therapies, which will allow us to finally drop the cytotoxic drugs eliciting such unwanted and catastrophic secondary effects as tMN. It is not an overstatement to say that, while improving the treatment of primary tumours, we could entirely eradicate therapy-related neoplasms right from their origin. Looking forward.

  Blog eradication-of-therapy-related-myeloid-neoplasms

• Molecular characteristics in Burkitt lymphoma over age groups

  Treatment optimization has improved the overall survival in Burkitt lymphoma (BL) patients but there are still relevant outcome differences between pediatric and adult patients. In both age groups survival remains poor for patients who suffer relapse. Therefore, new treatment approaches are warranted to improve survival. Thus, we conducted a comparative study in the largest pediatric cohort to date including 191 cases and 97 samples from adult patients and analyzed the mutational landscape. We detected overlapping molecular profiles but also significant differences in the mutational pattern. Samples from pediatric patients show a higher frequency of mutations in ID3, DDX3X and BAF-complex components ARID1A and SMARCA4, while YY1AP1 and BCL2 are more frequently mutated in cases from adult BL patients. Correlation of the mutational profile with clinical data was available for the pediatric cohort and identified TP53 mutations to be highly significantly associated with the incidence of relapse thus identifying the first molecular marker to be associated with the incidence of relapse in pediatric BL. As the hotspot analysis of TP53 mutations showed mostly gain of function mutations, it is tempting to speculate that drugs decreasing the amount of malignant TP53 or increase the abundance of wildtype TP53 could be a promising approach for future treatment regimens to further improve prognosis.

  Study EGAS00001005270

• Unifying recovery dynamics in heterogeneous diseases exemplified by COVID-19

  Studying the recovery dynamics in different diseases poses many difficulties, as patients often display high heterogeneity in their recovery courses. Moreover, most attempts to study disease dynamics focus on disease progression rather than disease recovery mechanisms. To model recovery dynamics, using severe COVID-19 as the example, we align heterogeneous recovery trajectories via a novel computational scheme applied to longitudinally sampled blood transcriptomes. We thus generate pseudotime trajectories, which we then link to cellular and molecular mechanisms based on cell deconvolution analysis and molecular pathway prediction, thus presenting a unique framework for studying recovery processes over time. Specifically, mature neutrophils displayed a gradual decrease during recovery, allowing superior useability for outcome prediction compared to currently used clinical markers. Further, we discovered a recovery-related regulatory change in gene programs resulting in immune rebalancing between interferon and NFkB activity and the restoration of cell homeostasis. We thus propose regulatory mechanisms governing COVID-19 recovery and suggest mature neutrophils and additional gene markers, as novel clinical biomarkers for disease outcome. Overall, we present a novel clinically relevant computational framework for modeling disease recovery, paving the way for future studies of the recovery dynamics in other diseases and tissues.

  Study EGAS00001005735

• Developmental_Dysplasia_of_the_Hip__DDH_

  The National Joint Registry for England and Wales (NJR) has become established as one of the largest repositories of clinical information about patients undergoing hip and knee replacement. The primary aim of this proposal is to examine the feasibility of adding value to that clinical information by partnering it with a DNA dataset to allow its use to be extended to the study of the underlying pathogenesis of diseases of the hip and knee, and the complications of their treatment. We will do this 1) by establishing a mechanism for accessing and linking pseudo-anonymised demographic and phenotype data between the NJR database and the proposed DNA Biobank; 2) by validating the collection of postal DNA samples from consenting NJR patients; and 3) by genotyping genome-wide 900 patients with the condition developmental dysplasia of the hip (DDH) to find variants that play a role in this heritable condition. The successful demonstration that the NJR can be used to establish a DNA Biobank will provide a powerful platform to examine the genetic basis for a wide range of joint diseases, and the complications of their treatment. This proposal is to carry out the genotyping portion of this project on the current CoreExome array

  Study EGAS00001000916

• Genome-wide DNA-methylation assessment by MethylCap-seq and Infinium HumanMethylation450 BeadChips: an independent large-scale comparison

  DNA-methylation is an important epigenetic feature in health and disease. Two cost-efficient genome-scale methodologies to assess DNA-methylation are MethylCap-seq and Illumina's Infinium HumanMethylation450 BeadChips (HM450). However, objective information regarding the best-suited methodology for a specific research question is scant. Therefore, we performed a large-scale evaluation on a set of 70 brain tissue samples obtained from 65 glioblastoma and 5 non-tumoral brain tissues, using a gold standard free Bayesian modeling procedure. While conditional specificity was adequate for both approaches, conditional sensitivity was systematically higher for HM450. Also the genome-wide characteristics were compared, revealing that the HM450 probes assess less than 10% of the regions identified as methylated by MethylCap-seq. Hence the latter method may detect more potentially relevant DNA-methylation, defined by either functional location or previously reported differentially methylated candidate regions. Our results therefore indicate that – at least for the tissue under study - both methodologies are complementary, with a higher sensitivity for HM450, but a far larger genome-wide coverage for MethylCap-seq. Note that here only the relevant MethylCap-seq data is deposited, for the HM450 data we refer to GEO (GSE60274).

  Study EGAS00001001191

• Genomics of enteropathy associated T cell lymphoma (EATL)

  Enteropathy-associated T cell lymphoma (EATL) is a lethal and the most common neoplastic complication of celiac disease. In this study, we applied whole exome sequencing in 69 EATL tumors to define the genetic landscape of EATLs. The most frequently mutated gene in EATL was SETD2 (32% of cases), with loss of function mutations comprising a large proportion (41%) of those mutations. The JAK-STAT pathway was the most frequently mutated signaling pathway, with mutations in STAT5B being the most common, followed by JAK1, JAK3, STAT3, and the negative regulator of the pathway, SOCS1. We also identified mutations in NRAS and KRAS, as well as TP53 and TERT. Interestingly, the two types of EATL had highly overlapping genetic alterations indicating shared mechanisms underlying their pathogenesis. Gene expression analysis of the two types of EATL identify robust differences in transcriptional profiles. We further modeled the effects of SETD2 loss in vivo by developing a T cell specific knockout mouse model. These mice manifested an expansion of γδ T cells that identify novel roles for SETD2 in T cell development and lymphomagenesis. Together, our data render the most comprehensive genetic portrait yet of this uncommon but lethal disease, and may inform future classification schemes.

  Study EGAS00001001954

• Comparison of structural variations from 10X Genomics linked-reads and conventional Illumina short-reads sequencing

  Structural variations (SVs) are large genomic rearrangements that can drive many diseases. Conventional short-reads whole genome sequencing (cWGS) allows their identification with base-pair resolution, but suffers from high false discovery rate. cWGS taps in short-range information from short-reads while linked-reads sequencing (10XWGS) utilizes long-range information. 10XWGS allows linkage of short-reads originating from the same large DNA molecule with a unique barcode captured in a gel bead in emulsion. This mitigates alignment-based artefacts from cWGS especially in repetitive regions. However, the false discovery rate of this technology is unclear. In this study, we performed a comprehensive analysis of different type and size of SVs predicted from these two technologies. The SVs common between both technologies were found to be highly specific by PCR and Sanger sequencing while validation rate dropped for uncommon events. Further, we propose a novel enrichment approach for filtering out false positive calls from both the technologies independently. To this end, we trained a machine learning model for respective technologies and used it to characterise SVs from MCF7 cell line and a primary breast cancer tumor with high precision. This approach would be valuable in understanding true mechanisms driven by SVs in various diseases.

  Study EGAS00001004093

• Whole-Genome Sequencing Suggests Schizophrenia Risk Mechanisms in Humans with 22q11.2 Deletion Syndrome

  Chromosome 22q11.2 microdeletions impart a high but incomplete risk for schizophrenia. Possible mechanisms include genome-wide effects of DGCR8 haploinsufficiency. In a proof-of-principle study to assess the power of this model, we used high-quality, whole-genome sequencing of nine individuals with 22q11.2 deletions and extreme phenotypes (schizophrenia, or no psychotic disorder at age >50 years). The schizophrenia group had a greater burden of rare, damaging variants impacting protein-coding neurofunctional genes, including genes involved in neuron projection (nominal P = 0.02, joint burden of three variant types). Variants in the intact 22q11.2 region were not major contributors. Restricting to genes affected by a DGCR8 mechanism tended to amplify between-group differences. Damaging variants in highly conserved long intergenic noncoding RNA genes also were enriched in the schizophrenia group (nominal P = 0.04). The findings support the 22q11.2 deletion model as a threshold-lowering first hit for schizophrenia risk. If applied to a larger and thus better-powered cohort, this appears to be a promising approach to identify genome-wide rare variants in coding and noncoding sequence that perturb gene networks relevant to idiopathic schizophrenia. Similarly designed studies exploiting genetic models may prove useful to help delineate the genetic architecture of other complex phenotypes.

  Study EGAS00001002344

• Inhibiton of the GABPB1L-containing GABP tetramer is sufficient to reverse replicative immortality in TERT promoter mutant glioblastoma cells.

  Over 50 types of cancer acquire TERT promoter mutations. These single point mutations reactivate telomerase, allowing for indefinite maintenance of telomere length and enabling cellular immortalization. The transcription factor binding site created by the point mutations specifically recruit the ETS factor GABP, a multimeric transcription factor composed of the GABPα and GABPβ subunits. GABP can form two functionally independent transcription factor species – a dimer or a tetramer – depending on which of the structurally distinct GABPβ isoforms is incorporated into the complex. In this study, we show that genetic disruption of GABPβ1L, a tetramer forming isoform of GABPβ that is dispensable in normal development, results in TERT silencing in a TERT promoter mutation dependent manner. Failure to activate TERT expression by GABPβ1L culminates in telomere dysfunction, DNA damage, and mitotic cell death exclusively in TERT promoter mutant cells. Furthermore, exogenous expression of TERT is sufficient to prevent telomere degradation and loss of cell viability in GABPβ1L-reduced lines bearing the mutant TERT promoter. Orthotopic injection of tetramer-deficient mutant TERT promoter GBM cells rendered lower tumor burden and prolonged the overall survival of the tumor-bearing mice. These results highlight the potentially widespread role of GABPB1L in enabling replicative immortality of TERT promoter cancers.

  Study EGAS00001002582