3446 results for "*geneti*"

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• Gabriella Miller Kids First Pediatric Research Program in Bladder Exstrophy, Epispadias, Complex (BEEC)

  Urogenital anomalies account for 20-30% of prenatally detected structural defects. Bladder Exstrophy Epispadias Complex (BEEC) describes a subset of anomalies with a spectrum of developmental defects ranging from a mild form of epispadias, to classic bladder exstrophy, to omphalocele, exstrophy, imperforate anus, spinal anomalies (OEIS) complex. Patients with BEEC suffer substantial morbidity and mortality due to impaired genito-urinary dysfunction. The etiology of BEEC is largely unknown. Elucidating the underlying genetic component is critical to gaining a better understanding of the developmental signaling pathways and is likely the first step to developing targeted therapy.

  Study phs002173

• H3Africa - Genomic and Environmental Risk Factors for Cardiometabolic Disease in Africans

  The long-term vision of the AWI-Gen Collaborative Centre (CC) is to build sustainable capacity in Africa for research that leads to an understanding of the interplay between genetic, epigenetic and environmental risk factors for obesity and related cardiometabolic diseases (CMD) in sub-Saharan Africa. The CC will be consolidated under the auspices of the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) and the International Network for the Demographic Evaluation of Populations and Their Health in Developing Countries (INDEPTH). It will capitalize on the unique strengths of existing longitudinal cohorts, including the urban Soweto and rural Agincourt studies in South Africa (Wits based), and the well established INDEPTH demographic health and surveillance centers in Kenya, Ghana, Burkina Faso and South Africa. The centers offer established infrastructure, trained fieldworkers, long-standing community engagement, and detailed longitudinal phenotypic data, focusing on obesity and cardiometabolic health. Key strengths are harmonized phenotyping across sites, building on strong existing cohorts, and representation of the geographic and social variability of African populations. We aim to: 1. Build sustainable infrastructure (biobanks and laboratories) and capabilities (well characterized population cohorts, genotyping and bioinformatics) for genomic research on the African continent; 2. Understand the genomic architecture of sub-Saharan populations from west, east and south Africa to guide genomic studies (genome sequencing and high throughput SNP and CNV arrays using unrelated individuals and family trios to improve the accuracy of haplotype analyses) and; 3. Investigate the independent and synergistic genomic contributions to body fat distribution (BMI, hip/waist circumference, subcutaneous and visceral fat) in these populations considering the relevant environmental and social contexts (rural/urban communities, quickly transitioning obesity prevalence, differential HIV, TB, and malaria infection histories). We will investigate the effect of obesity and fat distribution on the risk for CMD in the longitudinal cohorts.

  Study EGAS00001002482

• Spatiotemporal evolution and inter-patient heterogeneity in primary and recurrent/metastatic head and neck squamous cell carcinoma

  Head and neck cancer squamous cell carcinomas (HNSCCs) are heterogeneous in terms of origin and aetiology. In addition, there is uncertainty about the spatiotemporal genetic evolution from initial diagnosis to recurrence/metastasis (R/M) after primary treatments and further disease progression following systemic treatment. Changes in the genetic profile have implications on the selection of appropriate treatments for patients, especially in the era of targeted therapies and immunotherapies. Here, we analysed a cohort of 11 HNSCC patients with metachronous R/M, among whom nine had paired primary and R/M samples suitable for next-generation sequencing (multiple R/M samples collected at different time points were available for some of the patients). At the genomic level, the R/M samples shared a fraction of the somatic single nucleotide variants (SNVs) with the index primary tumours, but they also acquired many additional mutations, while losing only a few others. A similar behaviour was also observed when examining the changes of mutational signatures between primary and R/M samples. Overall, R/M appeared thus more genetically diverse than the respective primary tumours. The transcriptomic analysis showed that R/M samples had lower immune cell infiltration and several genes related to immune response were significantly downregulated compared to the primary samples. Our results underline the importance of analysing multiple samples per patient to obtain a more complete picture of the patient’s tumour and advocates a re-biopsy in the event of R/M and treatment failure, in order to select the most appropriate therapeutic strategy.

  Study EGAS00001007464

• DNA methylation atlas of normal human cell types

  DNA methylation is a fundamental epigenetic mark that governs chromatin organization, cell identity, and gene expression. Here we describe a human methylome atlas, based on deep whole-genome bisulfite sequencing allowing fragment-level analysis across thousands of unique markers for 39 cell types sorted from 205 healthy tissue samples. Replicates of the same cell-type are >99.5% identical, demonstrating robustness of cell identity programs to genetic variation and environmental perturbation. Unsupervised clustering of the atlas recapitulates key elements of tissue ontogeny, and identifies methylation patterns retained since gastrulation. Loci uniquely unmethylated in an individual cell type often reside in transcriptional enhancers and contain DNA binding sites for tissue-specific transcriptional regulators. Uniquely hyper-methylated loci are rare and are enriched for CpG islands, polycomb targets, and CTCF binding sites, suggesting a novel role in shaping cell type-specific chromatin looping. The atlas provides an essential resource for interpretation of disease-associated genetic variants, and a wealth of potential tissue-specific biomarkers for use in liquid biopsies.

  Study EGAS00001006791

• Natural genetic variation of the cardiac transcriptome in non-diseased donors and patients with dilated cardiomyopathy

  Background: Genetic variation is an important determinant of RNA transcription and splicing, which in turn contributes to variation in human traits including cardiovascular diseases.Results: Here we report the first in-depth survey of heart transcriptome variation using RNA-sequencing in 149 (97)* patients with dilated cardiomyopathy and 113 (108)* non-diseased controls. We reveal extensive differences of gene expression and splicing between dilated cardiomyopathy patients and controls, affecting known as well as novel dilated cardiomyopathy genes. Moreover, we show a widespread effect of genetic variation on the regulation of transcription, isoform usage and allele specific expression. Systematic annotation of genome wide association SNPs identifies 60 functional candidate genes for heart phenotypes, representing 20% of all published heart genome wide association loci. Focusing on the dilated cardiomyopathy phenotype we found that eQTL variants are also enriched for dilated cardiomyopathy genome wide association signals in two independent cohorts.Conclusions: RNA transcription, splicing and allele specific expression are each important determinants of the DCM phenotype and are controlled by genetic factors. Our results represent a powerful resource for the field of cardiovascular genetics. (*) numbers in parentheses represent samples that the publication is based on.

  Study EGAS00001002454

• Comprehensive genetic analysis of uveal melanoma heterogeneity during metastatic progression

  Uveal melanoma (UM) is the most common primary intraocular malignancy in adults. Despite improvement of diagnosis and treatment of the primary tumor, there is no effective treatment of metastatic disease and approximately half of patients will die within one year or less following metastases detection. Tumor heterogeneity has been proposed as a key factor of drug resistance. However, it has been scarcely studied in UM. The present project aims searching for specific drivers of the metastatic progression, describing the genomic and transcriptomic landscape of metastatic UM, exploring tumor heterogeneity and investigating its role in drug resistance. Thus whole exome sequencing and transcriptomics have been performed on constitutional, primary tumor and metastatic samples from 28 UM patients.

  Study EGAS00001002761

• IL-17B uses IL-17RA and IL-17RB to induce Type-2 inflammation from human lymphocytes

  IL-17 family cytokines are critical to host defense responses at cutaneous and mucosal surfaces. Whereas IL-17A, IL-17F, and IL-17C induce overlapping inflammatory cascades to promote neutrophil-mediated immunity, IL-17E/IL-25 drives type 2 immune pathways and eosinophil activity. Genetic and pharmacological studies reveal the significant contribution these cytokines play in antimicrobial and autoimmune mechanisms. However, little is known about the related family member, IL-17B, with contrasting reports of both pro- and anti-inflammatory function in rodents. We demonstrate that in the human immune system, IL-17B is functionally similar to IL-25 and elicits type 2 cytokine secretion from innate type 2 lymphocytes, NKT, and CD4+ CRTH2+ Th2 cells. Like IL-25, this activity is dependent on the IL-17RA and IL-17RB receptor subunits. Furthermore, IL-17B can augment IL-33–driven type 2 responses. These data position IL-17B as a novel component in the regulation of human type 2 immunity.

  Study EGAS50000000579

• A comprehensive DNA methylation landscape of human and mouse cell lines derived from hematological malignancies

  Human cancer cell lines constitute useful models to study the primary disease and many relevant findings in tumor biology have been originated from them since the first immortalized cell line (HeLa) was obtained. The easy experimental intervention, the purity of the transformed cells and their versatility to undergo high-throughput screenings represent advantageous features of the established cancer cell lines. In recent years, major efforts have characterized in detail the multiomics make-up of hundreds of cancer cell lines and studied their association with sensitivity to anticancer drugs. Most of these studies have been genetic-centric and have not characterized in detail the epigenetic profiles underlying the characteristics of these cells or their impact on the efficacy of antitumoral compounds. In this regard, a past version of a DNA methylation microarray or a less accessible and more time-consuming such as reduced representation bisulfite sequencing have been used in those attempts to interrogate the epigenetic setting. Herein, we have obtained the DNA methylation profiles of 210 cell lines derived from hematological malignancies utilizing comprehensive DNA methylation microarrays that interrogates more than 850,000 and 285,000 CpG sites from human and mouse genomes, respectively. Importantly, we also provide a pharmacoepigenetic example of the potential use of this resource by showing how DNA methylation can predict response to nucleoside analogues.

  Study EGAS50000000627

• Genomic profiling of IBC

  We collected matched pretreatment blood and tumor samples from 19 patients with primary TN-IBC enrolled in a phase II clinical trial (NCT02876107). Patients were treated with neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC) or the anti-EGFR antibody panitumumab (PmAb) plus NAC (PmAb/NAC). We conducted whole-exome sequencing, RNA sequencing, and CIBERSORT analyses for these TN-IBC samples and compare the genetic and molecular profiles with similarly analyzed stage III TN-non-IBC patient samples. We also compared the genetic and molecular characteristics of TN-IBC in patients who had a pathologic complete response (pCR) to NAC or PmAb/NAC treatment, a suitable surrogate endpoint for IBC, with those who did not have pCR (non-pCR).

  Study EGAS00001007520

• Single-cell RNA sequencing reveals the mesangial identity and species diversity of glomerular cell transcriptomes

  Molecular characterization of the individual cell types in human kidney as well as model organisms are critical in defining organ function and understanding translational aspects of biomedical research. Previous studies have uncovered gene expression profiles of several kidney glomerular cell types, however, important cells, including mesangial (MCs) and glomerular parietal epithelial cells (PECs), were missing or incompletely described, and a systematic comparison between mouse and human kidney is lacking. To this end, we used Smart-seq2 to profile 4332 individual glomerulus-associated cells isolated from human living donor renal biopsies and mouse kidney. The analysis revealed genetic programs for all four glomerular cell types (podocytes, glomerular endothelial cells, MCs and PECs) as well as rare glomerulus-associated macula densa cells (MDCs). Importantly, we detected heterogeneity in glomerulus-associated Pdgfrb-expressing cells, including bona fide intraglomerular MCs with the functionally active phagocytic molecular machinery, as well as a unique mural cell type located in the central stalk region of the glomerulus tuft. Furthermore, we observed remarkable species differences in the individual gene expression profiles of defined glomerular cell types that highlight translational challenges in the field and provide a guide to design translational studies.

  Study EGAS00001004943