14476 results for "PLOS+ONE+Pennsylvania+German+ACS+language+code+pdc+open+access+study"

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• Expression profiling of a human endocrine pancreas iPSC model

  Directed differentiation of stem cells offers a scalable solution to the need for human cell models recapitulating islet biology and T2D pathogenesis. We profiled mRNA expression at six stages of an induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) model of endocrine pancreas development from two donors, and characterized the distinct transcriptomic profiles associated with each stage. Established regulators of endodermal lineage commitment, such as SOX17 (log2 fold change [FC] compared to iPSCs=14.2, p-value=4.9x10-5) and the pancreatic agenesis gene GATA6 (log2 FC=12.1, p-value=8.6x10-5), showed transcriptional variation consistent with their known developmental roles. However, these analyses highlighted many other genes with stage-specific expression patterns, some of which may be novel drivers or markers of islet development. For example, the leptin receptor gene, LEPR, was most highly expressed in published data from in vivo-matured cells compared to the endocrine pancreas-like cells (log2 FC=5.5, p-value=2.0x10-12), suggesting a role for the leptin pathway in the maturation process. Endocrine pancreas-like cells showed significant stage-selective expression of adult islet genes, including INS, ABCC8, and GLP1R, and enrichment of relevant GO-terms (e.g. “insulin secretion”; odds ratio=4.2, p-value=1.9x10-3): however, principal component analysis indicated that in vitro-differentiated cells were more immature than adult islets. Integration of the stage-specific expression information with genetic data from T2D genome-wide association studies revealed that 46 of 82 T2D-associated loci harbor genes present in at least one developmental stage, facilitating refinement of potential effector transcripts. Together, these data show that expression profiling in an iPSC islet development model can further understanding of islet biology and T2D pathogenesis.

  Dataset EGAD00001002148

• Shedding light over COVID-19 susceptibility and severity

  “One of the most remarkable features of SARS-CoV-2 infection is the variation in consequence ranging from asymptomatic to life-threatening” state the authors of the majestic Nature paper released in accelerated pre-view on July 2021. This variation in consequences represent not only an issue of burning medical relevance, but also a scientific and intellectual challenge for scientists around the globe. Researchers are known to be easily triggered by a challenge, and they recently demonstrated to be even better at double their efforts to focus on an urgent societal need. In this work led and coordinated by the COVID-19 Host Genetics Initiative (COVID-19 HGI), researchers gathered data from 49,562 cases and two million controls from 46 studies performed worldwide. The majority of the data has been deposited at the EGA, where 29 datasets have been collected under the study number EGAS00001005304. Data gathered from diverse sources conferred a huge robustness to the results. Genetic data from different ancestry origin were included in the analyses, even though data from patients with European origin was highly predominant (approx. 75%). Separated analysis of the different ancestries gave rise to relevant differences in the results, highlighting how important it is to take this aspect in consideration for future studies. Data from the individual studies was compiled into three categories according to COVID-19 severity for a meta-analysis: (a) critically ill cases (b) moderate or severe cases (c) all cases. They were paired with non-COVID-19-reported controls. All three analysis resulted in a total of 13 genetic loci associated with COVID-19 severity. Out of those, 9 loci associated specifically with critical illness, while 6 (a few overlapped) associated with moderated illness. Some genomic position matched previous findings. Interestingly, working with such an enormous amount of data allowed the depth to discriminate association with disease susceptibility vs severity, an issue of large medical relevance. Several loci mapped into biological relevant genes, like TYK2, PPP1R15A and FOXP4, previously implicated in immune response and/or lung functions. Researchers participating in the COVID-19 Host Genetics Initiative have worked in an unprecedented time-tight collaboration, prioritizing data sharing and collective results to tackle the pandemic affecting the world. The scientific community won’t miss any of the lessons to learn from this, and the EGA is ready to keep working to enable safe data sharing and fruitful collaborations.

  Blog covid-19-susceptibility-and-severity

• National Eye Institute (NEI) Age-Related Eye Disease Study (AREDS)

  The Age-Related Eye Disease Study (AREDS) was initially designed as a long-term multi-center, prospective study of the clinical course of age-related macular degeneration (AMD) and age-related cataract. In addition to collecting natural history data, AREDS included a clinical trial of high-dose vitamin and mineral supplements for AMD and a clinical trial of high-dose vitamin supplements for cataract. AREDS participants were 55 to 80 years of age at enrollment and had to be free of any illness or condition that would make long-term follow-up or compliance with study medications unlikely or difficult. On the basis of fundus photographs graded by a central reading center, best-corrected visual acuity and ophthalmologic evaluations, 4,757 participants were enrolled in one of several AMD categories, including persons with no AMD. The clinical trials for AMD and cataract were conducted concurrently. AREDS participants were followed on the clinical trials for a median time of 6.5 years. Subsequent to the conclusion of the clinical trials, participants were followed for an additional 5 years and natural history data were collected. The AREDS research design is detailed in AREDS Report 1. AREDS Report 8 contains the mainline results from the AMD trial; AREDS Report 9 contains the results of the cataract trial. Blood samples were also collected from 3,700+ AREDS participants for genetic research. Genetic samples from 600 AREDS participants (200 controls, 200 Neovascular AMD cases, and 200 Geographic Atrophy cases) were selected using data available in March 2005 and then were evaluated with a genome-wide scan. These data, as well as selected phenotypic data, were made available in the dbGaP. DNA from AREDS participants, which is currently being stored in the AREDS Genetic Repository, is available for research purposes. However, not all of the 3,700+ AREDS participants who submitted a blood sample currently have DNA available. In addition to including the data from the genome-wide scan on the 600 original samples, this second version of the AREDS dbGaP database provides a comprehensive set of data tables with extensive clinical information collected for the 4,757 participants who participated in AREDS. The tables include information collected at enrollment/baseline, during study follow-up, fundus and lens pathology, nutritional estimates, quality of life measures and measures of morbidity and mortality. In November 2010, over 72,000 high quality fundus and lens photographs of 595 AREDS participants (of the original 600 selected for the genome-wide scan) were made available in the AREDS dbGaP. In addition to the genome-wide scan data, the fundus and lens grading data for these participants are also available through the AREDS dbGaP. Details about the ocular photographs that are available may be found in the document "Age-Related Eye Disease Study (AREDS) Ocular Photographs". In January 2012, a measure of daily sunlight exposure was added in a separate "sunlight" table. Furthermore, the "followup" table has been revised. The visual acuity for the right eye was inadvertently missing at odd-numbered visits (01, 03, 05, etc.). This data is now part of the table. In February 2014 over 134,500 high-quality fundus photographs (macular field F2) of 4613 AREDS participants were added to the existing AREDS dbGaP resource. The AREDS dbGaP image archive already contains over 72,000 high quality fundus and lens photographs of 595 AREDS participants for whom dbGaP-accessible genotype data exist. Information about the available ocular photographs found in the document "Age-Related Eye Disease Study (AREDS) Ocular Photographs" has been updated with an addendum. It is hoped that this resource will better help researchers understand two important diseases that affect an aging population. These data may be applied to examination and inference on genetic and genetic-environmental bases for age-related diseases of public health significance and may also help elucidate the clinical course of both conditions, generate hypotheses, and aid in the design of clinical trials of preventive interventions. Definitions of Final AMD Phenotype Categories Please see phd001138.1 for a detailed description of how AREDS participants' final AMD phenotype was categorized. User's Guide for AREDS Phenotype Data A detailed User's Guide for the AREDS phenotype data is available. This User's Guide is meant to be a comprehensive document which explains the complexities of the AREDS data. It is recommended that all researchers using AREDS phenotype data make use of this User's Guide.

  Study phs000001

• DNA Methylation Analysis of Prostate Cancer Cell Lines and Tissues Using Next Generation Sequencing

  Aberrant DNA methylation changes are known to occur during prostate cancer progression beginning with precursor lesions. Utilizing fifty nanograms of genomic DNA in Methylplex-Next Generation Sequencing (M-NGS) we mapped the global DNA methylation patterns in prostate tissues (n=17) and cells (n=2). Peaks were located from mapped reads obtained in each sequencing run using a Hidden Markov Model (HMM)-based algorithm previously used for Chip-Seq data analysis(http://www.sph.umich.edu/csg/qin/HPeak). The total methylation events in intergenic/intronic regions between benign adjacent and cancer tissues were comparable. Promoter CGI methylation gradually increased from -12.6% in benign samples to 19.3% and 21.8% in localized and metastatic cancer tissues and approximately 20% of all CpG islands (CGIs) (68,508) were methylated in tissues. We observed distinct patterns in promoter methylation around transcription start sites, where methylation occurred directly on the CGIs, flanking regions and on CGI sparse promoters. Among the 6,691 methylated promoters in prostate tissues, 2481 differentially methylated regions (DMRs) are cancer specific and several previously studied targets were among them. A novel cancer specific DMR in WFDC2 promoter showed 77% methylation in cancer (17/22), 100% methylation in transformed prostate cell lines (6/6), none in the benign tissues (0/10) and normal PrEC cells. Integration of LNCaP DNA methylation and H3K4me3 data suggested a role for DNA methylation in alternate transcription start site utilization. While methylated promoters containing CGIs had mutually exclusive H3K4me3 modification, the histone mark was absent in CGI sparse promoters. Finally, we observed difference in methylation of LINE-1 elements between transcription factor ERG positive and negative cancers. The comprehensive methylome map presented here will further our understanding of epigenetic regulation of the prostate cancer genome. Overall Design: We mapped the global DNA methylation patterns in prostate tissues (n=17) and cells (n=2) from fifty nanograms of genomic DNA using Methylplex-Next Generation Sequencing (M-NGS). For replicate analysis in cell lines, a total of 4 runs were completed for PrEC prostate normal cell line, and 5 runs were completed for LNCaP prostate cancer cell line. For tissue samples, 2 benign prostate samples were sequenced twice on Illumina next generation sequencing platform to access overall repeatability of M-NGS.

  Study phs000597

• ELLIPSE Prostate Cancer Meta-Analysis and Genotyping

  The ELLIPSE Consortium is an international effort to discover risk loci for prostate cancer. It includes the meta-analysis of existing GWAS data as well as novel GWAS, exome, and iCOGS genotyping. The GWAS meta-analysis includes the following cases and controls from studies of European ancestry: UK GWAS stage 1 (Illumina Infinium HumanHap 550 Array: 1854 cases and 1894 controls), UK GWAS stage 2 (Illumina iSELECT: 3706 cases and 3884 controls), CAPS1 (Affymetrix GeneChip 500K: 474 cases and 482 controls), CAPS2 (Affymetrix GeneChip 5.0K: 1458 cases and 512 controls), BPC3 (Illumina Human610 Illumina: 2068 cases and 3011 controls), PEGASUS (HumanOmni2.5: 4600 cases and 2941 controls). The OMNI 2.5M genotyping was conducted for 977 prostate cancer cases from UKGPCS. The Exome SNP array genotyping was conducted for 4741 subjects from UKGPCS. The iCOGs genotyping was conducted for 10366 subjects which includes the Multiethnic Cohort (n=1648) and UKGPCS (n=8718). Below is a description of each study that contributed to the meta-analysis of men of European ancestry. Information about the studies that contributed to the multiethnic meta-analysis can be found on the associated study page and also in Conti et al (Nature Genetics, PMID:33398198).   UK GWAS Stage 1 (UK1) and Stage 2 (UK2): The UK Genetic Prostate Cancer Study (UKGPCS) was first established in 1993 and is the largest prostate cancer study of its kind in the UK, involving nearly 189 hospitals. We are based at The Institute of Cancer Research in Sutton, Surrey, and collaborate with the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust. Our aim is to find genetic changes which are associated with prostate cancer risk. Our target is to recruit 26,000 gentlemen into the UKGPCS by 2017. Men are eligible to take part if they fit into at least one of the following groups: They have been diagnosed with prostate cancer at 60 years of age or under (up to their 61st birthday). They have been diagnosed with prostate cancer and a first, second or third degree relative where at least one of these men were diagnosed with prostate cancer at 65 years of age or under. They are affected and have 3 or more cases of prostate cancer on one side of their family. They are a prostate cancer patient at the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust. We have to date recruited around 16,000 men on whom we have germline DNA and clinical data at diagnosis. The UK GWAS is based on genotyping of 541,129 SNPs in 1,854 individuals with clinically detected (non-PSA-screened) prostate cancer (cases) and 1,894 controls. 43,671 SNPs showing strong evidence of association in stage 1 were followed up by genotyping a further 3,268 cases and 3,366 controls from UK and Melbourne in stage2. CAPS1 and CAPS2: The CAPS (Cancer of the Prostate in Sweden) study represents a large Swedish population-based cancer study, comprising 3,161 cases and 2,149 controls, recruited between 2001 and 2003. Biopsy confirmed prostate cancer cases were identified and recruited from four out of six regional cancer registries in Sweden, diagnosed between July 2001 and October 2003. Clinical data including TNM stage, Gleason grade and PSA levels at time for diagnosis were retrieved through record linkage to the National Prostate Cancer Registry. Control subjects, who were recruited concurrently with case subjects, were randomly selected from the Swedish Population Registry and matched according to the expected age distribution of cases (groups of 5-year intervals) and geographic region. Whole blood was collected from all individuals for extraction of genomic DNA. A GWAS was conducted in two parts. In the first phase (CAPS1) 498 cases and 502 controls were genotyped, in the second phase 1,483 cases and 519 controls were genotyped. Genotyping was performed using the GeneChip Human Mapping 500K (CAPS1) and 5.0K (CAPS2) Array Set from Affymetrix (Santa Clara, CA). The National Cancer Institute Breast and Prostate Cancer Cohort Consortium, BPC3: BPC3 was a consortium of prospective cohort studies investigating genetic and gene-environmental risk factors for breast and prostate cancer. Each study selected cases and controls for this study as described below. The clinical criteria defining advanced prostate cancer (Gleason = 8 or stage C/D) were either obtained from medical records or cancer registries. The Gleason score source was either surgical specimens (radical prostatectomy or autopsy) or the diagnostic biopsy (needle biopsy or TURP). When multiple Gleason scores were available the surgical value was used. PLCO was removed from the analysis as the samples were included in the Pegasus GWAS described below. In total 2,473 advanced prostate cancer cases and 3,534 controls were included in the analysis following QC. ATBC, Alpha-Tocopherol, Beta-Carotene Cancer Prevention Study: ATBC was a randomized, placebo-controlled primary prevention trial to investigate whether α-tocopherol or ß-carotene supplementation reduced the incidence of lung or other cancers in male smokers. Between 1985 and 1988, 29,133 men ages 50 to 69 years were enrolled in the trial from Finland and randomized to supplementation (50 mg α-tocopherol, 20mg ß-carotene, or both) or placebo. Men with a prior history of cancer, other than non-melanoma skin cancer or carcinoma in situ, were excluded from participating. Incident cancer cases are identified through linkage with the Finnish Cancer Registry, which has ~100% ascertainment of cancer cases nationwide. Cases included 249 men diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer (Gleason = 8 or stage C/D) from 1985 to 2003 with DNA available. Controls were 1,271 men selected previously for a GWAS of lung cancer in ATBC without a diagnosis of prostate cancer. CPSII, Cancer Prevention Study II: CPSII is a cohort study started in 1982 to investigate the relationship between dietary, lifestyle and other etiologic factors and cancer mortality. Approximately 1.2 million men and women enrolled in the study from 50 states in the U.S. In 1992, a subset of these participants (n= ~184,000) were enrolled in the CPSII Nutrition Cohort to examine the relationship between dietary and other exposures and cancer incidence. Blood samples were drawn from approximately 39,376 members of the Nutritional Cohort from 1998 to 2001, and buccal cells were collected from 69,467 members from 2001 to 2002. Cancer cases are identified by self-report through follow-up questionnaires followed by verification through medical records and/or linkage to state cancer registries as well as death certificates. A total of 660 advanced prostate cancer cases (Gleason = 8 or stage III/IV) with a source of DNA were identified for this study. Controls were 660 men matched on ethnicity, date of birth, sample collection date and DNA type. EPIC, European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition: EPIC is a prospective study designed to investigate both genetic and non-genetic risk factors for different forms of cancer. Study participants were almost all white Europeans. Approximately 500,000 individuals (150,000 men) in EPIC were recruited between 1992 and 2000, from 23 centers in 10 European countries. Overall approximately 400,000 subjects also provided a blood sample at recruitment. The methods of recruitment and details of the study design are described in detail elsewhere. In brief, study participants completed an extensive questionnaire on both dietary and nondietary data at recruitment. The present study includes subjects from advanced prostate cancer cases (Gleason = 8 or stage III/IV) matched to controls based on study center, length of follow-up, age at enrollment (± 6 months), fasting and time of day of blood collection (± 1 hour). The advanced prostate cancer subjects were from 8 of the 10 participating countries: Denmark, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom (UK). France and Norway were not included in the current study because these cohorts only included female subjects. All participants gave written consent for the research and approval for the study was obtained from the ethical review board from all local institutions in the regions where participants had been recruited for the EPIC study. HPFS, Health Professionals Follow-up Study: HPFS began in 1986 and is an ongoing prospective cohort study of 51,529 United States male dentists, optometrists, osteopaths, podiatrists, pharmacists, and veterinarians 40 to 75 years of age. The baseline questionnaire provided information on age, marital status, height and weight, ancestry, medications, smoking history, disease history, physical activity, and diet. At baseline the cohort was 97% white, 2% Asian American, and 1% African American. The median follow-up through 2005 was 10.5 years (range 2-19 years). Self-reported prostate cancer diagnoses were confirmed by obtaining medical and/or pathology records. Prostate cancer deaths are either reported by family members in response to follow-up questionnaires, discovered by the postal system, or the National Death Index. Questionnaires are sent every two years to surviving men to update exposure and medical history. In 1993 and 1994, a blood specimen was collected from 18,018 men without a prior diagnosis of cancer. Prostate cancer cases are matched to controls on birth year (+/-1) and ethnicity. Controls are selected from those who are cancer-free at the time of the case’s diagnosis, and had a prostate-specific antigen test after the date of blood draw.   MEC, Multiethnic Cohort: The Multiethnic Cohort Study is a population-based prospective cohort study that was initiated between 1993 and 1996 and includes subjects from various ethnic groups - African Americans and Latinos primarily from Californian (great Los Angeles area) and Native Hawaiians, Japanese-Americans, and European Americans primarily from Hawaii. State drivers’ license files were the primary sources used to identify study subjects in Hawaii and California. Additionally, in Hawaii, state voter’s registration files were used, and, in California, Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA) files were used to identify additional African American men. All participants (n=215,251) returned a 26-page self-administered baseline questionnaire that obtained general demographic, medical and risk factor information. In the cohort, incident cancer cases are identified annually through cohort linkage to population-based cancer Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) registries in Hawaii and Los Angeles County as well as to the California State cancer registry. Information on stage and grade of disease are also obtained through the SEER registries. Blood sample collection in the MEC began in 1994 and targeted incident prostate cancer cases and a random sample of study participants to serve as controls for genetic analyses. PHS, Physicians Health Study:PHS was a randomized trial of aspirin and ß carotene for cardiovascular disease and cancer among 22,071 U.S. male physicians ages 40-84 years at randomization; none had a cancer diagnosis at baseline. The original trial ended, but the men are followed. From 1982 to 1984, blood samples were collected from 14,916 physicians before randomization. Participants are sent yearly questionnaires to ascertain endpoints. Whenever a physician reports cancer, we request permission to obtain the medical records, and cancers are confirmed by pathology report. We obtain death certificates and pertinent medical records for all deaths. Follow-up for nonfatal outcomes in PHS is over 97% complete, and for mortality, over 99%. PLCO, Prostate, Lung, Colorectal and Ovarian Cancer Screening Trial:PLCO is a multicenter, randomized trial to evaluate screening methods for the early detection of prostate, lung, colorectal and ovarian cancer. Between 1993 and 2001, over 150,000 men and women ages 55-74 years were recruited from ten centers in the United States (Birmingham, AL; Denver, CO; Detroit, MI; Honolulu, HI; Marshfield, WI; Minneapolis, MN; Pittsburgh, PA; Salt Lake City, UT; St. Louis, MO; and Washington, D.C.). Men randomized to the screening arm underwent prostate cancer screening with prostate-specific antigen (PSA) annually for six years and digital rectal exam annually for four years. Blood specimens were collected from participants randomized to the screening arm of the trial, and buccal cell specimens were obtained from participants randomized to the control arm. Cases included 754 men diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer (Gleason = 8 or stage III/IV) from either arm of the trial. Of these cases, 317 were genotyped previously as part of Cancer Genetic Markers of Susceptibility (CGEMS), a GWAS for prostate cancer. Controls included 1,491 men without a diagnosis of prostate cancer from the screening arm of the PLCO trial. All subjects provided informed consent to participate in genetic etiology studies of cancer and other traits. This study was approved by the institutional review boards at the ten centers and the National Cancer Institute. PLCO was removed from the meta-analysis of the BPC3 studies as a consequence of PEGASUS below. PEGASUS, Prostate cancer Genome-wide Association Study of Uncommon Susceptibility loci: Pegasus is a genome-wide association nested within the Prostate, Lung, Colorectal and Ovarian (PLCO) Cancer Screening Trial. PLCO is a multicenter, randomized trial to evaluate screening methods for the early detection of prostate, lung, colorectal and ovarian cancer. Between 1993 and 2001, over 150,000 men and women ages 55-74 years were recruited from ten centers in the United States (Birmingham, AL; Denver, CO; Detroit, MI; Honolulu, HI; Marshfield, WI; Minneapolis, MN; Pittsburgh, PA; Salt Lake City, UT; St. Louis, MO; and Washington, D.C.). Men randomized to the screening arm underwent prostate cancer screening with prostate-specific antigen annually for six years and digital rectal exam annually for four years. Blood specimens were collected from participants randomized to the screening arm of the trial, and buccal cell specimens were obtained from participants randomized to the control arm. Cases included 4,598 men of European ancestry diagnosed with prostate cancer from either arm of the trial and controls included 2,941 men of European ancestry without a diagnosis of cancer from the screening arm, matched on age and year of randomization. All subjects provided informed consent, and the study approved by the institutional review board at the National Cancer Institute. Funding:This work was supported by the GAME-ON U19 initiative for prostate cancer (ELLIPSE): U19 CA148537. The BPC3 was supported by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, National Cancer Institute (cooperative agreements U01-CA98233, U01-CA98710, U01-CA98216, and U01-CA98758, and Intramural Research Program of NIH/National Cancer Institute, Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics). The ATBC study and PEGASUS was supported in part by the Intramural Research Program of the NIH and the National Cancer Institute. Additionally, this research was supported by U.S. Public Health Service contracts N01-CN-45165, N01-RC-45035, N01-RC-37004 and HHSN261201000006C from the National Cancer Institute, Department of Health and Human Services. CAPS: The Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden was supported by the Cancer Risk Prediction Center (CRisP; www.crispcenter.org), a Linneus Centre (Contract ID 70867902) financed by the Swedish Research Council, Swedish Research Council (grant: K2010-70X-20430-04-3), the Swedish Cancer Foundation (grant: 09-0677), the Hedlund Foundation, the Söderberg Foundation, the Enqvist Foundation, ALF funds from the Stockholm County Council. Stiftelsen Johanna Hagstrand och Sigfrid Linnér’s Minne, Karlsson’s Fund for urological and surgical research. We thank and acknowledge all of the participants in the Stockholm-1 study. We thank Carin Cavalli-Björkman and Ami Rönnberg Karlsson for their dedicated work in the collection of data. Michael Broms is acknowledged for his skillful work with the databases. KI Biobank is acknowledged for handling the samples and for DNA extraction. Hans Wallinder at Aleris Medilab and Sven Gustafsson at Karolinska University Laboratory are thanked for their good cooperation in providing historical laboratory results. UKGPCS would like to acknowledge the NCRN nurses and Consultants for their work in the UKGPCS study. We thank all the patients who took part in this study. This work was supported by Cancer Research UK (grants: C5047/A7357, C1287/A10118, C1287/A5260, C5047/A3354, C5047/A10692, C16913/A6135 and C16913/A6835). We would also like to thank the following for funding support: Prostate Research Campaign UK (now Prostate Cancer UK), The Institute of Cancer Research and The Everyman Campaign, The National Cancer Research Network UK, The National Cancer Research Institute (NCRI) UK. We are grateful for support of NIHR funding to the NIHR Biomedical Research Centre at The Institute of Cancer Research and The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust. The MEC was supported by NIH grants CA63464, CA54281 and CA098758. 

  Study phs001120

• Molecular Genetic Studies of Developmental Brain Disorders

  Study 1 2R01-NS050375 (PI: DOBYNS, William B.) The genetic basis of mid-hindbrain malformations Our general goal for this project is to advance our understanding of human developmental disorders that involve the brainstem and cerebellum - brain structures derived from the embryonic midbrain and hindbrain - that affect a minimum of 2.4 per 1000 resident births based on data from the CDC. Importantly, this large class of disorders co-occurs with more common developmental disorders such as autism, mental retardation and some forms of infantile epilepsy, and shares some of the same causes. With this renewal, we propose to expand the scope of our work beyond single phenotypes and genes to focus on delineating the critical phenotype spectra to which the most common MHM belong, and defining the underlying biological networks that are disrupted. To pursue these goals, we will use our large and growing cohort of human subjects to map additional MHM loci using SNP microarrays that provide both high-resolution autozygosity and linkage data in informative families as well as detect critical copy number variants in sporadic subjects. The causative genes will be identified using traditional Sanger or new high-throughput sequencing methods as appropriate abased on size of the critical region. We will use these and other known MHM causative genes to construct and revise model biological networks of genes and proteins, and test these genes and networks in additional patients as a candidate gene or more accurately a candidate network approach. These approaches need to be supported by ongoing active subject recruitment, as studies of comparable disorders such as mental retardation and autism have benefited from even larger numbers of subjects that we have so far collected. We need to use new high-throughput sequencing methods to more efficiently test larger critical regions, and to test entire gene networks rather than individual genes in matched cohorts of subjects. At every step; phenotype analysis, CNV analysis, model network construction and high-throughput sequencing, we will need expanded bioinformatics capabilities. Finally, we need to test the biological function of new genes and networks to support our gene identification studies. We expect that these studies will contribute immediately to more accurate diagnosis and counseling, and over time will lead to development of specific treatments for a subset of these disorders. We further expect that studies of mid-hindbrain development will have broad significance for human developmental disorders generally, providing compelling evidence for a connection between cerebellar development and other classes of developmental disorders such as autism, mental retardation and epilepsy. Study 2 R01-NS058721 (PI: DOBYNS, William B.) De novo copy number variation and gene discovery in human brain malformations Project Summary/Abstract The number of recognized brain malformations and syndromes has grown rapidly during the past several decades, yet relatively few causative genes have been identified, especially for three common malformations that have been associated with numerous cytogenetically visible chromosome deletions and duplications, and that often occur together: agenesis of the corpus callosum (ACC), cerebellar vermis hypoplasia (CVH) including Dandy-Walker malformation (DWM), and polymicrogyria (PMG). We propose to perform high-resolution array comparative genome hybridization (aCGH), emerging technology able to detect small copy number variants (CNV), in 700 probands with one or more of these three malformations. Our central hypothesis states that more than 10% of patients with ACC, CVH or PMG will have de novo CNV below the resolution of routine cytogenetic analysis, but detectable by current array platforms. We therefore expect to identify 70-100 patients with small CNV. We will distinguish CNV found in normal individuals from potentially disease-associated changes, and will confirm CNV using fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) and microsatellite (STRP) analysis. We will give highest priority to CNV that are de novo and involve 2 or more BACs, and secondary priority to familial and smaller CNV excluding known polymorphisms. After that, we will evaluate and rank candidate genes in the critical regions using information from public databases and our own expression studies, and perform mutation analysis of the best candidate genes from well-defined critical regions by sequencing in a large panel of subjects with phenotypes that match the phenotypes of the patients whose CNV define the critical regions. Here, we will use more refined criteria to supplement our clinical classification, such as the developmental level and presence of epilepsy or other birth defects. Any abnormalities found will be analyzed using existing data regarding polymorphisms (i.e. dbSNP), cross-species comparisons, and functional assays appropriate for the specific sequence change. Study 2A In 1995, we described a novel multiple congenital anomaly syndrome associated with facial dysmorphism (congenital ptosis, high arched eyebrows, shallow orbits, trigonocephaly), colobomas of the eyes, neuronal migration malformation (frontal predominant lissencephaly) and variable hearing loss. We hypothesized from de novo mutations and used trio-based exome sequencing to identify de novo mutations in the ACTB and ACTG1 genes. Study 2B In 1997 and 2004, we and others defined two novel developmental syndromes associated with markedly enlarged brain size, or megalencephaly, and other highly recognizable features. The megalencephaly-capillary malformation syndrome (MCAP) consists of megalencephaly and associated growth dysregulation with variable asymmetry, developmental vascular anomalies, distal limb malformations, variable cortical malformation, and a mild connective tissue dysplasia. The megalencephaly-polymicrogyria-polydactyly-hydrocephalus syndrome (MPPH) resembles MCAP but lacks vascular malformations and syndactyly. We hypothesized that MCAP and MPPH result from mutations - including postzygotic events - in the same pathway, and studied them together. Using a combination of exome sequencing, Sanger sequencing, restriction-enzyme assays, and targeted ultra-deep sequencing in 50 families with MCAP or MPPH, we identified de novo germline or postzygotic mutations in three core components of the phosphatidylinositol-3-kinase/AKT pathway. These include two mutations in AKT3, a recurrent mutation in PIK3R2, and multiple mostly postzygotic mutations in PIK3CA (Rivière JB, Mirzaa GM, O'Roak BJ, Beddaoui M, Alcantara D, Conway RL, St-Onge J, Schwartzentruber JA, Gripp KW, Nikkel SM, Worthylake T, Sullivan CT, Ward TR, Butler HE, Kramer NA, Albrecht B, Armour CM, Armstrong L, Caluseriu O, Cytrynbaum C, Drolet BA, Innes AM, Lauzon JL, Lin AE, Mancini GMS, Meschino WS, Reggin JD, Saggar AK, Lerman-Sagie T, Uyanik G, Weksberg R, Zirn B, Beaulieu CL, FORGE Canada Consortium, Majewski J, Bulman DE, O'Driscoll M, Shendure J, Graham Jr. JM, Boycott KM, Dobyns WB. De novo germline and postzygotic mutations in AKT3, PIK3R2 and PIK3CA cause a spectrum of related megalencephaly syndromes. Nat. Genet. In press). Study 3 2R01-NS046616 (PI: GOLDEN, Jeffrey A) The role of ARX in normal and abnormal brain development This subcontract from the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia to the University of Chicago (UC) is intended to support research studies of the ARX and functionally related genes in human subjects with any one of several specific developmental disorders. The Co-investigator at UC (W.B. Dobyns) will identify a series of patients with mental retardation and severe infantile epilepsy, some of whom will have specific brain malformations and others who will have normal brain structure by brain imaging studies, and collect research samples from these subjects with informed consent. The studies to be performed will include mutation analysis of ARX, mutation analysis of specific downstream target genes, X inactivation studies in humans and X inactivation studies in mutant mice. The results will be analyzed to determine the significance of any changes found in the gene.

  Study phs000455

• Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics - Underserved Populations (RADx-UP): COVID-19 Testing and Prevention in Correctional Settings

  This study will work with diverse correctional facilities across MN, RI, WA, and FL to characterize the incidence of COVID-19 disease progression and related outcomes. The goal is to identify barriers and facilitators to develop strategies to improve testing in these under-served populations by: Increasing the reach, access, uptake, and impact of COVID-19 testing among incarcerated people and staff in prison and jails. Individuals in congregate settings have been disproportionately affected by COVID-19, with correctional settings accounting for 39 of the 50 largest cluster outbreaks in the country to date. Schema of Correctional Facilities: Correctional facilities are amplifiers of infectious diseases for structural reasons: 1) Dormitory-style living and overcrowded conditions make social distancing nearly impossible 2) They have a focus primarily on security not health 3) Their medical departments are under-resourced and often disconnected from local public health agencies. Correctional facilities must be the focus of urgent intervention to understand the incidence of COVID-19, how it spreads in correctional facilities, and durable long-term strategies to reduce transmission, including testing and vaccines. However, our work from the COVID Prison Project shows that correctional systems have implemented a range of testing strategies, without coordination, such that synthesizing the information on COVID-19 incidence, outcomes and optimal testing strategies (including repeat testing and contact tracing) has been challenging. Incarcerated people decline testing due to concerns about confidentiality, implications for release, and fear of placement in solitary confinement. Through interviews we will identify ethical concerns and potential solutions for COVID-19 testing and vaccine strategies in correctional facilities using a community-engaged strategy. The project's work from the COVID Prison Project shows that correctional systems have implemented a range of testing strategies, without coordination, such that synthesizing the information on COVID-19 incidence, outcomes and optimal testing strategies (including repeat testing and contact tracing) has been challenging. Incarcerated people decline testing due to concerns about confidentiality, implications for release, and fear of placement in solitary confinement. Through interviews we will Identify ethical concerns and potential solutions for COVID-19 testing and vaccine strategies in correctional facilities using a community-engaged strategy. Goals: 1. Identify ethical concerns and potential solutions for COVID-19 testing and vaccine strategies in correctional facilities using a community-engaged strategy. 2. Characterize incidence of COVID-19, disease progression, and related-outcomes and effectiveness of testing and contact tracing in correctional facilities. Participant Selection: a. Potential subjects must be currently incarcerated at key facilities in Washington, Rhode Island, Minnesota, and Florida. These facilities are Everglades Correctional Institution and Homestead Correctional Institution in Florida, Shakopee and Stillwater correctional facilities in Minnesota, the Rhode Island Department of Corrections, and Yakima County Jail in Washington. b. Participating correctional facilities in Florida, Minnesota, Rhode Island, and Washington will provide de-identified data on approximately 16,859 incarcerated adults and correctional staff. Data sources include deidentified data from medical records, administrative data, and policy documents pertaining to COVID-19. c. 3 series of focus groups (6, 12, 18 months) x 3 distinct groups (incarcerated people, medical providers, and correctional leaders) x 4 sites=36 total focus groups over the study period. d. Will utilize 74,812 COVID-19 tests to test and re-test a total of 16,859 incarcerated people and correctional staff for active infection over a six-month period in the FL, MN, and RI state prison systems and the Yakima County Jail in WA.

  Study phs003361

• GEnomics and Transcriptomics of Human INsulinoma (GETHIN)

  The Genomics and Transcriptomics of Human Insulinoma (GETHIN) The common forms of diabetes - Types 1 and 2 - ultimately result from a deficiency of insulin-producing pancreatic beta cells. The Genomics and Transcriptomics of Human Insulinoma (GETHIN) study was performed in order to identify novel approaches to inducing human pancreatic beta cells to replicate and regenerate. As a corollary, developing drugs that are able to expand human beta cell mass in people with diabetes should reverse diabetes. Unfortunately, identifying druggable pathways that can enhance human beta cell replication has been a major challenge. In 2017, there is only one class of drugs - the harmine analogues - that can induce human beta cells to replicate, and in this case, higher replication rates are desirable. Thus, identifying additional drugs and druggable pathways is a priority in diabetes research. Insulinomas are rare, benign adenomas of the pancreatic beta cell that cause excess insulin production and hypoglycemia: exactly the opposite of Types 1 and 2 diabetes. Beta cell proliferation rates in insulinomas are abnormally high. Thus, the premise for The Genomics and Transcriptomics of Human Insulinoma study is that benign human insulinomas hold the genomic and transcriptomic "recipe", and the repertoire of druggable pathways, that can be exploited to induce regeneration or replication of human beta cells in diabetes. Because, insulinomas are so rare, are almost always benign (non-malignant), and are easily resected by laparoscopic surgery, little attention has been paid to understanding the genomics or transcriptomics of insulinoma. There are at present only three published studies employing next-gen sequencing in insulinoma (PMID:24326773; PMID:25787250; and PMID:25763608). These studies contained 10, 7 and 8 insulinomas, respectively, and highlighted likely mutations in YY1 and MEN1. Our goal was to markedly expand the database and to add RNAseq to these earlier studies. The GETHIN study reports next-gen sequencing on 38 insulinomas, by far the largest series of human insulinomas subjected to next-gen sequencing (see the Selected publications section for reference). This includes paired (genomic plus tumor) whole exome sequencing on 26 human insulinomas (22 sequenced at Mount Sinai, 4 downloaded from Cao et al, PMID:24326773), and 25 sets of RNAseq from insulinomas, some of which also had paired whole exome sequencing, and some of which did not. The insulinoma RNAseq was compared to RNAseq from 22 sets of FACS-sorted normal human beta cells. Since insulinomas are so rare, the 38 insulinomas were collected by several investigators at several institutions over several decades, but most (22 whole exome sets, and all RNAseq) were sequenced at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York. The current dataset contains whole exome sequencing and RNAseq on the 11 insulinomas harvested at Mount Sinai. The four from Cao et al can be retrieved from Cao et al PMID:24326773. Fastq files from the remaining 23 insulinomas will be added as the local IRBs and Institutional Certifications are acquired. Complete patient data are provided in our Nature Communications report. Going forward, our intention is to expand this series, with the goal of sequencing 100 human insulinomas. These will be added to dbGaP as they accrue. Paired-end whole exome sequencing (mean usable sequencing depth 79X and 105X for blood and insulinoma, respectively) was performed using an Illumina HiSeq 2500. Insulinoma and sorted normal beta cell RNAseq was performed on Ribozero and polyA paired end libraries using the Illumina HiSeq 2500. Complete sequencing and bioinformatic details are provided in our Nature Communications report. The principal findings from the study are that although each insulinoma has a different set of presumptive driver mutations, the majority converge on genes that are members of the Polycomb Complex, Trithorax Complex and other epigenetic modifying enzymes. In addition, 20% of insulinomas have copy number loss or loss of heterozygosity of all or most of chromosome 11, and the majority display abnormalities in CpG methylation and imprinting control on the imprinted Chr 11 p15.5-15.4 region that contains INS, IGF2, CDKN1C, KCNQ1, and other genes involved in beta cell specification and proliferation.

  Study phs001422

• Molecular Biomarkers Predicting Lung Cancer Response Phenotypes

  We have used a "chemistry first" approach to discover druggable acquired vulnerabilities that arised in the pathogenesis of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). We screened chemical libraries (~200,000 compounds) for chemical toxins that killed subsets of NSCLC but not normal human lung epithelial cells (HBECs). We first screened a panel of 12 NSCLC lines that represented a variety of known oncogenotypes and identified chemicals with large Z scores and appropriate properties including re-supply, chemistry, and reproducible drug response phenotypes. This was then narrowed down to a list of 202 chemicals and 18 drugs with known targeting (henceforth called "Precision Oncology Probe Set", or POPS). These, and a panel of 30 clinically available drugs, targeted therapies, and drug combinations, already in use or in trials for NSCLC treatment, were then tested on a panel of 96 NSCLC lines for their drug response phenotypes in 12-point dose response curves. This information was analyzed using scanning ranked KS (Kolmogorov-Smirnov) and elastic net biostatistics approaches to identify molecular biomarkers (mutations, mRNA expression, copy number variation, protein expression, and metabolomics) which could predict for sensitivity or resistance to a particular chemical toxin or treatment regimen. From this we have discovered that: our approach identifies already known molecular biomarker of drug sensitivities (e.g. EGFR mutations and EGFR TK inhibitors); many clinically available chemotherapy agents have molecular biomarkers predicting preclinical model drug responses; the POP set of chemical toxins provides novel drug response phenotype patterns in the large NSCLC panel different from those found with clinically available agents including a therapeutic window; many of the POP toxins only hit a small percentage (~5%) of the NSCLC panel but the POP set as a whole provides "coverage" of the entire NSCLC panel; there are simple, one or 2 component molecular biomarkers (mutations, mRNA expression) that predict responses to the different chemical toxins in the NSCLC panel; and that the molecular biomarkers provide some information on the targets and pathways involved in response to the chemical toxins. Thus, we have identified a group of chemical toxins with selectivity for subsets of NSCLC and associated tumor molecular biomarkers to facilitate their development for precision medicine, and also, in some cases, information on the targets and pathways interdicted by these chemical compounds. In addition, we have discovered NSCLC predictive biomarkers for clinically available agents.

  Study phs001823

• A Genomic Atlas of Systemic Interindividual Epigenetic Variation in Humans (GTEx)

  Methylation of cytosines in CpG dinucleotides is an epigenetic mechanism with essential roles in mammalian development. To explore its functions in cellular differentiation, unbiased analysis of CpG methylation by whole genome bisulfite sequencing (WGBS) has been used to characterize epigenetic differences among different human tissues and cell types. Meanwhile, human interindividual variation in DNA methylation that is not cell-type specific has attracted relatively little attention. Systemic interindividual epigenetic variation is important, however, because like genetic variation it is a potential determinant of phenotypic variation and can be assessed in any easily obtainable DNA sample. Since systemic epigenetic variants originate in the preimplantation embryo, their establishment can be influenced by periconceptional environment, and potentially provide information about lifetime risks relevant to global health, obesity, and cancer. We elucidated systemic interindividual variation in CpG methylation in the human genome. We studied brain, heart, and thyroid tissues (representing all three germ layer lineages) from each of 10 donors in the NIH Gene-Tissue Expression (GTEx) project. We performed deep whole genome bisulfite sequencing for these 30 samples, achieving a sequencing depth of over 50x coverage per sample. We identified 9,926 correlated regions of systemic interindividual variation (CoRSIVs). These regions, comprising just 0.1% of the human genome, often correlate with one another over long genomic distances, are associated with transposable elements and subtelomeric regions, conserved across various human ethnic groups, and particularly sensitive to periconceptional environment. While genetic variation appears to influence methylation at most CoRSIVs, many show no evidence of genetic influence, suggestive of 'pure' epigenetic variation. At CoRSIVs, interindividual variation in DNA methylation in an easily biopsied tissue predicts expression in other tissues, and genes associated with these loci are implicated in a range of human disorders. In addition to charting a previously unrecognized molecular level of human individuality, this atlas of human CoRSIVs provides a resource for future population-based investigations into how interindividual epigenetic variation modulates risk of disease.Version 2 now also includes Target Capture Sequencing of CoRSIVs in 808 tissues (188 GTEx Donors). Focusing on the CoRSIVs identified by analyzing WGBS data, a Target Capture Bisulfite sequencing assay was developed. Using the genotype data of 188 GTEx donors, we assessed mQTL by capturing a 1MB region at each CoRSIV and quantifying methylation by Bisulfite-seq. The Target Capture Bisulfite sequencing data will be available to download via the AnVIL project.

  Study phs001746

• NHLBI TOPMed: My Life Our Future (MLOF) Research Repository of Patients with Hemophilia A (Factor VIII Deficiency) or Hemophilia B (Factor IX Deficiency)

  Hemophilia A and B are X-linked bleeding disorders resulting from a deficiency in coagulation factor VIII (FVIII) or factor IX (FIX), respectively. Hemophilia affects approximately 1/5000 male births worldwide, and results in premature death and disability due to bleeding if coagulation factor replacement therapy is not used effectively. Hemophilia is clinically categorized by coagulation factor activity levels and ranges in severity from mild (6% to 30%) to moderate (1-5%) to severe (<1%). Many female "carriers" of hemophilia also have decreased factor activity and morbidity from bleeding. Hemophilia A and B are almost always caused by identifiable mutations in the F8 and F9 genes, respectively, and these mutations are found throughout the structural genes. Although the hemophilias are monogenic disorders, there are wide variations in disease severity and therapeutic outcomes which are not readily explained by the disease causing mutations alone. The My Life Our Future (MLOF) project (www.mylifeourfuture.org) is a national resource developed by a partnership of BloodworksNW (BWNW, formerly the Puget Sound Blood Center), the American Thrombosis and Hemostasis Network (ATHN), the National Hemophilia Foundation (NHF) and Bioverativ, to provide free F8 and F9 gene variant analysis to patients with hemophilia A or B, and to establish a research repository of DNA sequence, DNA, RNA, buffy coat, serum and plasma. The sequence analysis and serum samples are linked to a phenotypic database hosted by ATHN, with samples submitted and clinical data entered at ~100 hemophilia treatment centers (HTCs) nationwide. (See ATHN Research Report Brief in the resource center at www.athn.org). MLOF has become the largest hemophilia genetic project worldwide. The roles of the MLOF partners are: BWNW, to serve as the central laboratory for the project and house the research repository; ATHN, to support and provide the administrative link with HTCs, to facilitate the collection of accurate phenotypic data, to conduct research review and approval for use of the repository and with BWNW to provide samples and data for research projects; NHF, to provide consumer education and facilitate consumer input into the project; and Bioverativ, to provide financial support and scientific input. The project is governed by a Steering Committee consisting of one representative from each organization. Subject samples chosen from the MLOF parent study for TOPMed and WGS were drawn from those who gave (or parents gave) informed consent for the Research Repository and included patients of all severities and type, but with an emphasis on those with severe hemophilia and others at increased risk of neutralizing antibody (inhibitor) formation and who had samples in the Research Repository (plasma, serum, RNA) for potential additional -omic studies. Also included were samples from subjects where a likely causative variant for hemophilia was not found in the F8 or F9 coding region, intron-exon boundaries or immediate upstream and downstream regions. Since hemophilia is an X-linked disorder, the majority of subjects are male. Racial distribution is similar to the overall population distribution.

  Study phs001515

• National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) Gene Discovery in Autosomal Dominant Focal Segmental Glomerulosclerosis (FSGS)

  Focal segmental glomerulosclerosis (FSGS) is a frequent cause of end-stage renal disease. The pathogenesis of FSGS has not been precisely defined and there are no consistently effective treatments. Recent studies identifying causal genes in rare, inherited FSGS, including our own study, have associated mutations in at least six genes with familial FSGS, and each discovery has clarified molecular mechanisms of glomerular injury. To build on this productive line of inquiry, we have ascertained and carefully characterized 118 families with familial FSGS. We have screened the remainder of our families for mutations in genes known to cause FSGS and identified the causal mutations in an additional 6 kindreds; the genetic basis of disease in the remaining 111 families is unknown. The objective of this proposal is to use this valuable and unique family resource to systematically identify causal genes for familial FSGS. Limitations of current conventional linkage and positional cloning approaches include their requirement for large, multiplex families. In addition, narrowing candidate areas in traditional linkage analysis can be difficult due to large regions that lack recombination events and hence these regions have required cumbersome and lengthy screening for causative mutations. Powerful new genetic tools can facilitate this screening process and improve variant discovery in smaller families. In particular, efficient whole-exome sequencing, the targeted capture of protein-coding gene sequences, should be particularly useful in our studies since most Mendelian disorders are caused by mutations affecting exomes of the target gene. Thus, by combining genome-wide linkage analysis (GWLS) and whole-exome sequencing, we can maximize impact of our family data and accelerate identification of novel mutations in FSGS. In preliminary studies, we have used this combination to identify a novel variant in the WT1 (Wilms' Tumor-1) gene in one FSGS family, and we have evidence suggesting it is the causal mutation. This success provides proof-of-concept and provides a roadmap of how genes will be identified and evaluated in the proposed studies. Our hypothesis is that causes of inherited FSGS in our cohort of families will be sequence variants in the coding region of genes not previously associated with familial FSGS. We aim to: 1) Use GWLS and whole-exome sequencing to identify genetic variants associated with familial FSGS. 2) Characterize functional consequences of candidate causative mutations and 3) Determine the prevalence in the Duke FSGS dataset of these new causative mutations identified in Aim 2. Any genes found to have causative mutations will be sequenced in the remaining families and take full advantage of our family resource. By combining genome-wide linkage analysis (GWLS), whole-exome sequencing, and characterization of variants' functional consequences, we will significantly improve understanding of normal glomerular biology and of the pathogenesis of FSGS and related glomerular diseases. Moreover, our discoveries are likely to reveal new opportunities to improve therapy for a disease that currently has few effective treatments.

  Study phs000777

• A_study_of_the_genetic_basis_of_evation_by_Acute_Myeloid_Leukaemia_of_Graft_vs_Leukaemia_effects_after_allogeneic_bone_marrow_transplantation

  Acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) is an aggressive and molecularly diverse disease with a poor overall survival of 20-25%. With an annual incidence of 2.9 per 100,000, AML is currently the commonest myeloid malignancy in Europe, yet the two main therapeutic options for this disease, anthracyclines and purine analogues, have remained unchanged for over 20 years. Currently patients are stratified at diagnosis according to a series of clinicopathological parameters (e.g. age, white cell count and presence/absence of previous clonal haematological disease) and molecular markers (e.g. chromosomal translocations/deletions, aneuploidy and mutations in genes such as FLT3 and NPM1). Patients with adverse prognostic features, whose prognosis is particularly poor (e.g. <15% long-term survival) are offered treatment with allogeneic bone marrow transplantation (allo-BMT) if a sibling or unrelated donor is available. This can significantly improve survival (e.g. up to 40% long-term survival in some contexts), albeit at the expense of significant toxicity and transplant-related mortality (TRM). Allo-BMT is thought to work in part by allowing the delivery of large doses of chemotherapy followed by haemopoietic "rescue" with donor haemopoietic stem cells (haemopoietic failure would otherwise ensue). However, potentially the most potent effect of allo-BMT is the cytotoxic effect of donor lymphocytes against AML blasts, a phenomenon known as graft-vs-leukaemia (GVL) effect. Increasingly, transplants using reduced chemotherapy intensity (mini-allografts) are being used that partially circumvent the toxicity from chemotherapy and rely on GVL to effect cure. Nevertheless, AML relapse after allo-BMT still occurs at a significant rate of up to 80% depending on the type of transplant. There is accumulating evidence that genetic events in residual leukaemic cells enable them to evade immunodetection and therefore survive the GVL effect and expand to cause relapse. The most striking example of this is the loss of HLA antigens after transplants in which donor and recipient are not fully HLA-matched. In these cases, the leukaemia "deletes" the genomic region containing the disparate HLA antigen which was preferentially targeted as "foreign" by the GVL effect. However, the genetic basis of immune evasion in the majority of transplants, which are fully HLA matched, is not known. One possibility is that loss of genes coding for antigens outside the HLA locus but which are also targets of GVL may operate, alternatively genetic events that affect processes downstream of immunological cytotoxicity may be responsible.The identification of genetic events that mediate immune evasion would not only facilitate the understanding of this process but can help plan therapeutic interventions that improve the outcomes of allogeneic transplantation for AML and other disorders. We intend to study this by conducting exome sequencing on 6 cases of AMLs from patients that attend my clinic at Addenbrooke's hospital and have relapsed after allogeneic transplantation. Samples from AML diagnosis, remission/normal and AML relapse (total n=18) will be studied to identify somatic mutations in the primary AML and those acquired by the relapsed clone. The 18 samples will also be studied by array CGH to detect regions of genomic amplification or deletion.

  Study EGAS00001000145

• WES data (cfTrack study) from NSCLC patients and OC patients

  We also collected samples from 8 NSCLC patients and 4 ovarian cancer patients and. For all 8 NSCLC patients, a tumor biopsy sample, a WBC sample, and three plasma samples were collected. For all 4 ovarian cancer patients, a WBC sample and two serum samples were collected. We collected tumor tissue sample from one ovarian cancer patient (OV4). The cfDNA was extracted from their plasma samples using the QIAamp circulating nucleic acid kit from QIAGEN (Germantown, MD). For serum cfDNA, ampure XP beads size selection was further performed to eliminate gDNA contamination. In brief, 0.5 volume of beads were first added to the cfDNA samples. After incubation, the supernatant was transferred to a new tube and an additional 2.0 volume of beads were added. After 80% ethanol wash, cfDNA was eluted from the beads. FA assays (Agilent Technologies) were performed to rule out the contamination of gDNA in the size selected samples. The cfDNA WES library of all patients and the genomic DNA WES library of the 4 ovarian cancer patients were constructed with the SureSelect XT HS kit from Agilent Technologies (Santa Clara, CA) according to the manufacturer’s protocol. In brief, 10ng of cfDNA was used as input material. After end repair/dA-tailing of cfDNA, the adaptor was ligated. The ligation product was purified with Ampure XP beads (Beckman-Coulter, Atlanta, GA) and the adaptor-ligated library was amplified with index primer in 10-cycle PCR. The amplified library was purified again with Ampure XP beads, and the amount of amplified DNA was measured using the Qubit 1xdsDNA HS assay kit (ThermoFisher, Waltham, MA). 700-1000 ng of DNA sample was hybridized to the capture library and pulled down by streptavidin-coated beads. After washing the beads, the DNA library captured on the beads was re-amplified with 10-cycle PCR. The final libraries were purified by Ampure XP beads. The library concentration was measured by Qubit, and the quality was further examined with Agilent Bioanalyzer before the final step of 2x150bp paired-end sequencing at an average coverage of 200. Whole-exome capture libraries of genomic DNA from the 8 NSCLC patients were constructed via Roche SeqCap EZ Exome V6 (Roche). Enriched exome libraries were sequenced on the Illumina HiSeq 3000 platform (Illumina) to generate 2x100bp paired-end reads at an average coverage of 200.

  Dataset EGAD00001008454

• Center for Common Disease Genomics [CCDG] - Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) - Global Microbiome Conservancy Host Exomes

  The human body is a complex ecosystem, hosting tens of billions of bacteria, primarily in the gut. This community, known as the 'gut microbiome', is vital to human health, affecting functions ranging from metabolism, immunity, and development, to behavior. Conversely, reduced microbiome diversity and other imbalances of the gut community (dysbiosis) are associated with many diseases of the industrialized world, such as metabolic syndrome, asthma, and inflammatory bowel diseases among others. Microbiome-based interventions thus hold the potential to revolutionize our understanding of, and therapeutic approaches to, many aspects of human health and disease. Despite many advances, current understanding of the human microbiome is largely limited to majority ethnic groups in industrialized nations, and does not reflect the full diversity of human commensal microbiota. In addition to the scientific ramifications of minority underrepresentation, there are significant translational and ethical implications as well: First, failing to capture the full diversity of healthy human microbiota may limit our ability to understand and generate effective therapeutics for many microbiome-associated diseases. Second, underrepresented groups are less likely to benefit from microbiome-based medical advances tailored to well-studied populations, propagating healthcare inequities. The window of opportunity to characterize human microbiome diversity is closing rapidly. Human gut microbial diversity is diminishing around the globe, due to the spread of Westernized diets and lifestyles, which are associated with reduced microbiome biodiversity. The Global Microbiome Conservancy (GMbC) is a non-profit collaboration between scientists and communities around the world that aims to 1) preserve the full biodiversity of the human gut microbiome, 2) characterize its evolution across populations and host lifestyles and 3) investigate its interactions with the human host. We are collecting gut microbiome and human DNA samples from diverse populations around the world, from isolated groups to urbanized populations, to culture and study this essential biodiversity and to preserve it in a living "seed bank" as a long-term safeguard against future extinctions. The National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) has funded a collaborative large-scale genome sequencing effort to comprehensively identify rare risk and protective variants contributing to multiple common disease phenotypes. Called the Centers for Common Disease Genomics (CCDG), this initiative will explore a range of diseases with the ultimate goal of: Undertaking variant discovery for enough different examples of disease architectures and study designs to better understand the general principles of the genomic architecture underlying common, complex inherited diseases. Understanding how best to design rare variant studies for common disease. Developing resources, informatics tools, and innovative approaches and technologies for multiple disease research communities and the wider biomedical research community. The initial focus of the CCDGs will be in cardiovascular disease (early-onset coronary artery disease, atrial fibrillation, hemorrhagic stroke), neuropsychiatric disease (epilepsy, autism), and autoimmune/inflammatory disease (type 1 diabetes, inflammatory bowel disease). The Broad Institute is one of four selected CCDG project centers. Both exome and genotyping information of GMbC participants will help understanding how recruited human populations are structured and genetically related. This human genetic structure will be analyzed in light of gut microbiome compositional and genomic differences to illuminate associations between specific microbiome traits and human groups and the evolutionary processes involved in the co-evolution of human hosts and their gut microbiome. It will also provide variant information for critical genes shaping the composition of microbiomes, such as genes involved in innate and adaptive immunity (e.g. antimicrobial peptides) or in the regulation of the immune response (e.g. Nod2). Association studies between specific variants in these genes and microbiome features will be performed, which will then be validated with in vitro and in vivo experiments. Human data from GMbC cohorts will also increase the genetic diversity of human populations, providing additional variant information for many susceptible loci that were found to be associated with Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis. The whole genome sequencing data generated is comprised of samples from diverse and indigenous populations. Raw sequencing data, metadata, vcf and phenotype data at the individual level for a subset of the cohort's samples are available at https://anvilproject.org/data. For questions about availability, contact help@lists.anvilproject.org. Microbiome data for the samples sequenced in this study can be found in phs002235 Global Microbiome Conservancy Sequence Data.

  Study phs002205

• A study of the genetic basis of evation by Acute Myeloid Leukaemia of Graft vs Leukaemia effects after allogeneic bone marrow transplantation

  Acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) is an aggressive and molecularly diverse disease with a poor overall survival of 20-25%. With an annual incidence of 2.9 per 100,000, AML is currently the commonest myeloid malignancy in Europe, yet the two main therapeutic options for this disease, anthracyclines and purine analogues, have remained unchanged for over 20 years. Currently patients are stratified at diagnosis according to a series of clinicopathological parameters (e.g. age, white cell count and presence/absence of previous clonal haematological disease) and molecular markers (e.g. chromosomal translocations/deletions, aneuploidy and mutations in genes such as FLT3 and NPM1). Patients with adverse prognostic features, whose prognosis is particularly poor (e.g. <15% long-term survival) are offered treatment with allogeneic bone marrow transplantation (allo-BMT) if a sibling or unrelated donor is available. This can significantly improve survival (e.g. up to 40% long-term survival in some contexts), albeit at the expense of significant toxicity and transplant-related mortality (TRM). Allo-BMT is thought to work in part by allowing the delivery of large doses of chemotherapy followed by haemopoietic "rescue" with donor haemopoietic stem cells (haemopoietic failure would otherwise ensue). However, potentially the most potent effect of allo-BMT is the cytotoxic effect of donor lymphocytes against AML blasts, a phenomenon known as graft-vs-leukaemia (GVL) effect. Increasingly, transplants using reduced chemotherapy intensity (mini-allografts) are being used that partially circumvent the toxicity from chemotherapy and rely on GVL to effect cure. Nevertheless, AML relapse after allo-BMT still occurs at a significant rate of up to 80% depending on the type of transplant. There is accumulating evidence that genetic events in residual leukaemic cells enable them to evade immunodetection and therefore survive the GVL effect and expand to cause relapse. The most striking example of this is the loss of HLA antigens after transplants in which donor and recipient are not fully HLA-matched. In these cases, the leukaemia "deletes" the genomic region containing the disparate HLA antigen which was preferentially targeted as "foreign" by the GVL effect. However, the genetic basis of immune evasion in the majority of transplants, which are fully HLA matched, is not known. One possibility is that loss of genes coding for antigens outside the HLA locus but which are also targets of GVL may operate, alternatively genetic events that affect processes downstream of immunological cytotoxicity may be responsible. The identification of genetic events that mediate immune evasion would not only facilitate the understanding of this process but can help plan therapeutic interventions that improve the outcomes of allogeneic transplantation for AML and other disorders. We intend to study this by conducting exome sequencing on 6 cases of AMLs from patients that attend my clinic at Addenbrooke's hospital and have relapsed after allogeneic transplantation. Samples from AML diagnosis, remission/normal and AML relapse (total n=18) will be studied to identify somatic mutations in the primary AML and those acquired by the relapsed clone. The 18 samples will also be studied by array CGH to detect regions of genomic amplification or deletion.

  Dataset EGAD00001000404

• T2D-GENES Consortium: San Antonio Mexican American Family Studies (SAMAFS)

  The Type 2 Diabetes (T2D) Genetic Exploration by Next-generation sequencing in Ethnic Samples (T2D-GENES) Consortium is a collaborative international effort to identify genes influencing susceptibility to type 2 diabetes in multiple ethnic groups using next generation sequencing. To fulfill this objective, T2D-GENES Consortium undertook two large sequencing studies, called T2D-GENES Projects 1 and 2. Project 1 has carried out whole exome sequencing of 12,940 individuals, 6,504 with T2D and 6,436 non-diabetic controls, equally divided among five continental ancestry groups: Europeans, East Asians, South Asians, Hispanic Americans, and African Americans. The goal of Project 1 is to identify all genetic variants in the complete coding regions of the genomes (i.e., whole exome) by sequencing, including rare variants. Project 2 (i.e., SAMAFS substudy 2) is a pedigree-based study designed to identify low frequency or rare variants influencing susceptibility to T2D, using whole genome sequence information from approximately 600 individuals in 20 Mexican American T2D-enriched pedigrees from San Antonio, Texas, augmented with family-based imputation into approximately 440 additional family members. The major objectives of Project 2 are to identify low frequency or rare variants in and around known common variant signals for T2D, as well as to find novel low frequency or rare variants influencing susceptibility to T2D. Both T2D-GENES Projects 1 and 2 involve the San Antonio Mexican American Family Studies (SAMAFS), which are composed of four San Antonio, Texas-based family studies: the San Antonio Family Heart Study (SAFHS), San Antonio Family Diabetes/Gallbladder Study (SAFDGS), Veterans Administration Genetic Epidemiology Study (VAGES), and Family Investigation of Nephropathy and Diabetes - San Antonio (FIND-SA) Component and its extension called the Extended FIND [E-FIND]. The SAFHS and SAFDGS began in 1991 and have followed participants with extensive clinical phenotyping related to T2D for over 20 years. The VAGES was initiated in 1994 and a large battery of T2D-related phenotypic data has been obtained from its participants. The FIND-SA began in 2000, a part of the multicenter FIND study which was designed to identify genetic determinants of diabetic kidney disease; data from its participants related to T2D were used for this project. Non-overlapping subsets of SAMAFS participants are part of the T2D-GENES Projects 1 and 2, henceforth referred to as SAMAFS substudies 1 and 2, respectively. The SAMAFS substudies 1 and 2 are part of one of the five awards funded by NIDDK under a cooperative agreement award mechanism, which is governed by the Steering Committee of the T2D-GENES Consortium. Since Project 1 relies on population based subsets of cases and controls, 491 unrelated participants are drawn from the four SAMAFS as part of the T2D-GENES Project 1 Mexican American sample (i.e., SAMAFS substudy 1). The whole exome sequencing was performed at the Broad Institute. For Project 2, 1048 individuals are drawn from two SAMAFS (SAFHS and SAFDGS), representing 20 large families for substudy 2. The substudy 2 strategy is to sequence approximately 600 individuals at an average of 50x coverage across the entire genome, then impute genome wide genotypes for about 440 additional family members. The 600 sequenced individuals are specifically chosen for their value in imputing sequence information into other family members. By studying large pedigrees, we expect to find multiple individuals carrying each genetic variant, even if this variant is very rare in the population at large. Thus, a pedigree-based approach provides an excellent opportunity for identifying rare novel variants influencing risk of T2D and quantitative variation in T2D-related phenotypes. The whole genome sequencing has been done commercially by Complete Genomics, Inc. (CGI). The available sample of 1,048 includes 5 sequenced individuals who do not belong to any of the 20 large pedigrees. The final family data of 1,043 individuals includes whole genome sequence data for 607 individuals. After quality control, 590 sequenced individuals provide data for family based imputation using Merlin linkage analysis software into approximately 440 additional family members for whom chip based genotypes are available to indicate which parental haplotype is transmitted. The complete SAMAFS data including phenotype, genotype, sequence, other T2D-related trait data utilized for Projects 1 and 2 are available. These data can readily be viewed by clicking on the substudy title shown below or in the box: "Substudies", located on the right hand side of this parent or top study page phs000847.v1.p1, titled T2D-GENES Consortium: San Antonio Mexican American Family Studies (SAMAFS). phs000849 T2D-GENES Project 1: San Antonio Mexican American Family Studies (SAMAFS), Substudy 1: Whole Exome Sequencing phs000462 T2D-GENES Project 2: San Antonio Mexican American Family Studies (SAMAFS), Substudy 2: Whole Genome Sequencing in Pedigrees

  Study phs000847

• Genome-Wide Association Study of Patients with Coccidioidomycosis

  BackgroundValley Fever is typically an infection of the lungs caused by the fungi Coccidioides immitis and Coccidioides posadasii. The incidence of Coccidioidomycosis (CM), or infection with Coccidioides, has dramatically increased over the last 20 years. This is particularly true in the Southwest of the United States, where people often breathe fungal spores that arise from the soil. Reasons for increased infection rates are thought to include population growth and construction in these endemic regions, an increase in the number of people whose immune systems are compromised due to infection or treatment with drugs required for organ transplants, climate change, as well as improved testing practices and greater physician awareness. Mild CM most commonly presents itself with flu-like symptoms and rashes, which can last weeks to months. Individuals with compromised immune systems, specifically-- substantial suppression of the immune cells known as T cells, can develop severe pulmonary and disseminated disease. Infection that remains localized to the lungs is referred to as pulmonary disease, but when the infection spreads out of the lungs into other parts of the body it represents a more serious condition referred to as a disseminated disease, or disseminated CM. In nature, Coccidioides spp. exists as mold and lives in dust and soil. When the contaminated soil or dust is disturbed by human activity, animals, or weather, the Coccidiodies spores are released into the air. Airborne spores are taken up by breathing and settle in the lungs. Once in the moist and warm environment of the lung, spores transform into spherules, which divide and become filled with smaller spores, called endospores. When the spherules get large enough, they rupture and release these endospores, which can spread and disseminate to surrounding tissue. The cycle then repeats itself as these endospores develop into new spherules3. Different ethnic groups have been described to vary in their susceptibility to developing disseminated CM after initial infection with Coccidioides. For example, evidence suggests that African-American and Filipino patients suffer the disseminated disease at a greater rate than other ethnicities. The suggestion that race plays a role in the clinical expression of the disease is still a source of debate amongst the scientific community and any genetic mechanisms responsible for these differences have yet to be fully elucidated. If our genetic makeup influences our ability to limit the spread of infection, finding which DNA differences cause these variances could provide clues to how the body successfully fights infection, and provide opportunities to boost the body’s ability to do this. Further, if we are able to identify the specific genetic risk factors that correlate with the development of disseminated infection, physicians could perform genetic screenings to identify high-risk patients and provide them with preemptive antifungal therapy prior to developing disseminated disease.The genome, made up of DNA, contains all of the information needed for humans to develop and grow. Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) allow us to look for inherited differences that are more common between people who share a particular trait, for example, height or susceptibility to certain diseases, compared to those who do not share the trait. Although some traits and diseases are controlled by a single gene, the majority are influenced by contribution from several, or even many, different genes. To find evidence of genes that contribute to specific traits, GWAS typically compares genome information from large numbers of people who have a particular disease (referred to as “cases”) looking for DNA sequences that are common among these samples, and are different from DNA sequences seen in large numbers of people who lack the trait, but are as much like the cases as possible (referred to as “controls”). The DNA sequence data from each group, cases versus controls, are analyzed to see if there are specific genomic differences that tend to be associated with the disease. MethodsTwo separate GWAS approaches were taken to look for genetic differences that could be responsible for the observed differences between the different patient populations we are studying. The first method, known as genotyping, scans for differences at a set of positions across the genome, which includes both the genes that encode our proteins and the larger amount of DNA that does not. The second method, known as exome sequencing, allows us to compare the entire sequence of the portion of the genome that codes for proteins.  For this study, DNA from patients with either pulmonary or disseminated CM were genotyped and exome sequenced to look for DNA differences that are associated with one condition or the other. All patients were at least 18 years old, had no evidence of immunosuppression, and had proven or probable pulmonary coccidioidomycosis according to established diagnostic criteria. Of these patients, a subset demonstrated disseminated disease, i.e., they showed evidence of coccidioidal infection outside of the thorax by biopsy/aspiration, had radiographic imaging, and show positive coccidioidal serology. Our criteria for including patients with the pulmonary disease were that they must not require ongoing antifungal treatment or show evidence of active CM (in skin test positive patients), show no evidence of extrapulmonary dissemination, and have no evidence of ongoing pulmonary infection (pulmonary nodules are accepted) beyond six months from diagnosis.Patient DNA was purified from blood or from sputum samples by the labs of our collaborators, Drs. George Thompson (UC Davis School of Medicine) and John Galgiani (University of Arizona Health Sciences). Genome-wide association (GWAS) analysis was carried out to look for candidate loci associated with pulmonary versus disseminated disease, taking into account the population structure of the samples. Single nucleotide or insertion/deletion variants were identified from whole-exome sequences (WES) using the Picard/BWA/GATK pipeline. ResultsTable 1. Pulmonary versus Disseminated Cases of Coccidiomycosis for GWAS, Sorted by EthnicityEthnicityPulmonary CasesDisseminated CasesAsian85Black/African American1664Caucasian/White4015Filipino03Hispanic/Latino3414Indian21Mexican American1039Pacific Islander01Samoan03Vietnamese10Unknown16917More than one race02Total373134Table 1 shows the number of samples analyzed from patients with pulmonary versus disseminated disease, and patient ethnicity, where known. In all, we worked with 507 samples, including 134 samples from patients with disseminated disease and 373 samples from patients with pulmonary disease. Of these, 505 samples were genotyped using the Multi-Ethnic Global Array from Illumina Inc. In addition, we were able to generate whole-exome sequence from 498 patient samples. No significant associations were detected that differed between samples from patients with pulmonary versus disseminated disease; that is, no particular DNA sequences were found to be significantly enriched in patients with disseminated disease compared to patients with pulmonary disease. The ability to detect genetic association between specific sequences and genetically determined traits is influenced by several factors, including how many patient samples are available to compare, how many different genes contribute to the trait and how strong their contributions are. When the number of genes is small and the contribution of each gene is great, smaller numbers of patient samples are needed to detect an association. When more genes are involved, or the contribution from each gene is more modest, larger numbers of patient samples must be examined. While we were not able to detect any associated within this study, it does not mean that subsequent studies would not find this connection. Our study suggests significantly more samples should be analyzed in further studies.Whole-exome sequences were generated from 498 samples and were aligned to reference sequences to identify positions where the sequences differed from the reference. These data are being analyzed to determine if any variants are associated with pulmonary, versus disseminated, disease. 

  Study phs002170

• Multi-Modal Single-Cell, Spatial, and Genomic Analyses of Human Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer Brain Metastases

  We performed single nuclei RNA-sequencing (snRNA-seq) with matched T cell receptor sequencing (TCR-seq), and pool matched low pass whole genome sequencing (WGS) of 12 treatment-naive non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) primary tumors (PTs) and 31 treatment-naive NSCLC brain metastases (BMs). In total, we recovered 277,206 cell transcriptomes in 43 samples. Single-nuclei suspension from frozen NSCLC metastases were generated using methods published in Slyper et al. (Nature Medicine, 2020, PMID:32405060) with modifications. The tissue was first cut in 20 µm sections using a cryostat and stored on dry ice until the next step. Then the tissue was put on wet ice and washed once with 5 ml PBS to remove OCT. After this step nuclei were extracted by vigorous pipetting in salt-tris buffer with Tween-20 (TST) followed by a high-volume wash in salt-tris buffer (ST). Nuclei were counted and 10,000-14,000 and were loaded using a Chromium controller (10X genomics) and Chromium Single Cell 5' Reagents (V1.1 and V2). Complementary DNA libraries were generated according to manufacturer's instructions, with the modification of one additional cycle of amplification. Matched single nuclei T cell receptor (snTCR) sequencing libraries were prepared from amplified cDNA libraries using either Chromium Single Cell V(D)J Enrichment Kit for human T cells Reagent Kit, v1.1, or single cell human TCR amplification kit. Final snTCR sequencing libraries were prepared using Single Index Kit T Set A for V1.1 libraries or Library construction kit and Dual Index Kit TT set A for V2 libraries. Sequencing libraries were quantified using Tapestation D5000 reagents and a 2200 TapeStation and pooled for sequencing. Pool matched low pass whole-genome sequencing (lp-WGS) was performed in addition to snRNA-seq to improve the identification of the malignant and non-malignant cell compartments. Nuclei from snRNA-seq sample preparations were collected by centrifugation (500g, 5 min), snap frozen after removing excess ST buffer, and stored at -200C until further processing. If insufficient nuclei (0C for 9 minutes. Adapters were not diluted, and the optional PCR (5 cycles) and cleanup were performed. After library cleanup with AMPure beads (Beckman Coulter, Brea, CA), libraries were quantified with Tapestation D5000 HS tapes (Agilent) and stored at -200C until sequencing.Using multiplexed immunofluorescence in an independent cohort of treatment-naïve pairs of primary tumors and brain metastases from the same patients with NSCLC, we validated genomic and tumor-microenvironmental findings and identified a cancer cell population characterized by neural features that strongly enriched in brain metastases. This comprehensive analysis provides insights into human NSCLC brain metastasis biology and serves as an important resource for additional discovery.

  Study phs003865

• Privacy Notice for EGA Web user

  Privacy Notice for EGA Public Website This Privacy Notice explains what personal data is collected by the specific service you are requesting, for what purposes, how it is processed, and how we keep it secure. 1. Who controls your personal data and how to contact us? European Genome- Phenome Archive - EGA offers a service for permanent archiving and sharing of all types of personally identifiable genetic and phenotypic data resulting from biomedical research projects, jointly managed by European Molecular Biology Laboratory – European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) and Fundació Centre de Regulació Genòmica - Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG). EMBL-EBI and CRG represent joint Data Controllers’ of processing of your personal data. They and their Data protection officers may be contacted for data protection queries and for exercising your rights under Section 8. You may contact EMBL-EBI, represented by dr. Thomas Keane, by: email at: tk2@ebi.ac.uk or post at EMBL-EBI, Wellcome Genome Campus, CB10 1SD Hinxton, Cambridgeshire, UK. EMBL’s Data Protection Officer may be contacted by: telephone at +49 6221 387-8590, email at dpo@embl.org , or post at EMBL Heidelberg, Data protection officer, Meyerhofstraße 1, 69117 Heidelberg, Germany. You may contact CRG, whose EGA team is represented by dr. Jordi Rambla de Argila, by: email at jordi.rambla@crg.eu, or post at Fundació Centre de Regulació Genòmica - Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG), Dr.Aiguader 88, PRBB Building, 08003 Barcelona, Spain. CRG Data protection officer may be contacted by: email at dpo@crg.eu post at Fundació Centre de Regulació Genòmica - Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG), C/ Dr. Aiguader, 88, PRBB Building, 08003 Barcelona, Spain. 2. Which is the lawful basis for processing personal data? For providing you access to the website and for offering support whilst using the website, we need your consent under Article 5 (2) of the IP 68 (equivalent to Article 6 (1)(a) of the GDPR). For monitoring your activities on the website, we process your personal data on the grounds of important public interest. Such legal basis is found in Article 5(1)(a) of EMBL Internal Policy No 68 on General Data Protection (hereinafter IP 68), which is equivalent to Article 6 (1)(e) of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (hereinafter GDPR) and upon which personal data are processed for the achievement of the aims laid down in 1973 agreement establishing EMBL, such as the promotion of the cooperation in the fundamental research, in the development of advanced instrumentation and in advanced teaching in molecular biology and dissemination of information. 3. What personal data is collected from users of the service? How do we use this personal data? We collect the following personal data from you: IP addresses Date and time of a visit to the service website Operating system Amount of data transmitted Browser Email address (only when support is requested by the user) The data controller will use your personal data for the following purposes: To provide the user access to the service To better understand the needs of the users and guide future improvements of the service To monitor website activities according to and in compliance with the Terms of Use To better understand the needs of the website visitors and guide future improvements of the service To conduct and monitor website security activities To create anonymous usage statistics 4. Who will have access to your personal data? The personal data will be disclosed to: Authorised staff in the data controller’s institutions acting on data controller`s behalf and instructions. 5. Will your personal data be transferred to third countries (i.e. countries not part of EU/EEA) and/or international organisations? There are no personal data transfers to third countries or international organisations. 6. How long do we keep your personal data? Any personal data directly obtained from you will be retained as long as the service is live. Such duration serves the purpose of enabling scientific research and ensures legal compliance and facilitates internal and external audits if they arise. By contrast, the log files for the data categories related to anonymous usage statistics (raw web service logs) are processed only for 30 days and thereafter erased. 7. The joint Data Controllers provide these rights regarding your personal data You have the right to: Not be subject to decisions based solely on an automated processing of data (i.e. without human intervention) without you having your views taken into consideration. Request at reasonable intervals and without excessive delay or expense, information about the personal data processed about you. Under your request we will inform you in writing about, for example, the origin of the personal data or the preservation period. Request information to understand data processing activities when the results of these activities are applied to you. Object at any time to the processing of your personal data unless we can demonstrate that we have legitimate reasons to process your personal data. Request free of charge and without excessive delay rectification or erasure of your personal data if we have not been processing it respecting the data protection policies of the respective controllers. It must be clarified that rights under points 4 and 5 are only available whenever you need support whilst using our website. For other processing based on the grounds of important public interest you cannot exercise your rights to object, rectify or erase your personal data according to the Article 13(2)(a)(b) of IP 68 (equivalent to Article 17(3)(b)(d) and Article 21(6) of the GDPR). 8. Supervisory authority If you wish to complain against the processing of your personal data, you may do so by post at: EMBL Heidelberg, Data Protection Committee, Meyerhofstraße 1, 69117 Heidelberg, Germany, or Autoritat Catalana de Protecció de Dades (Catalan Data Protection Authority), C/Rosselló 214, Esc A, 1r 1a, Barcelona 08008, Spain. Published at: February 6, 2019

  Documentation data-protection/privacy-notice/ega-website

• National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) GENEVA Genome-Wide Association Study of Venous Thrombosis (GWAS of VTE)

  Overview: Our overall long-term goal is to determine risk factors for the complex (multifactorial) disease, venous thromboembolism (VTE), that will allow physicians to stratify individual patient risk and target VTE prophylaxis to those who would benefit most. In this genome-wide association case-control study (1300 cases and 1300 controls) we hope to identify susceptibility variants for VTE. Mutations within genes encoding for important components of the anticoagulant, procoagulant, fibrinolytic, and innate immunity pathways are risk factors for VTE. We hypothesize that other genes within these four pathways or within other pathways also are VTE disease-susceptibility genes. Therefore, we performed a genome wide association (GWA) screen and analysis using the Illumina 660W platform to identify SNPs within 1,300 clinic-based, non-cancer VTE cases primarily from Minnesota and the upper Midwest USA, and 1300 clinic-based, unrelated controls frequency-matched on patient age, gender, myocardial infarction/stroke status and state of residence. This is a subset of a slightly larger candidate gene study using 1500 case-control pairs to identify haplotype-tagging SNPs (ht-SNPs) in a large set of candidate genes (n~750) within the anticoagulant, procoagulant, fibrinolytic, and innate immunity pathways. Study Populations. Cases. VTE cases were consecutive Mayo Clinic outpatients with objectively-diagnosed deep vein thrombosis (DVT) and/or pulmonary embolism (PE) residing in the upper Midwest and referred by Mayo Clinic physician to the Mayo Clinic Special Coagulation Laboratory for clinical diagnostic testing to evaluate for an acquired or inherited thrombophilia, or to the Mayo Clinic Thrombophilia Center. Any person contacted to be a control but discovered to have had a VTE was evaluated for inclusion as a case. Cases were primarily residents from Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Michigan, Illinois, North or South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri and Indiana. A DVT or PE was categorized as objectively diagnosed when (a) confirmed by venography or pulmonary angiography, or pathology examination of thrombus removed at surgery, or (b) if at least one non-invasive test (compression duplex ultrasonography, lung scan, computed tomography scan, magnetic resonance imaging) was positive. A VTE was defined as: Proximal leg deep vein thrombosis (DVT), which includes the common iliac, internal iliac, external iliac, common femoral, superficial [now termed "femoral"] femoral, deep femoral [sometimes referred to as "profunda" femoral] and/or popliteal veins. (Note: greater and lesser saphenous veins, or other superficial or perforator veins, were not included as proximal or distal leg DVT). Distal leg DVT (or "isolated calf DVT"), which includes the anterior tibial, posterior tibial and/or peroneal veins. (Note: gastrocnemius, soleal and/or sural [e.g., "deep muscular veins" of the calf] vein thrombosis was not included as distal leg DVT). Arm DVT, which includes the axillary, subclavian and/or innominate (brachiocephalic) veins. (Note: jugular [internal or external], cephalic and brachial vein thrombosis was not included in "arm DVT"). Hepatic, portal, splenic, superior or inferior mesenteric, and/or renal vein thrombosis. (Note: ovarian, testicular, peri-prostatic and/or pelvic vein thrombosis was not included). Cerebral vein thrombosis (includes cerebral or dural sinus or vein, saggital sinus or vein, and/or transverse sinus or vein thrombosis). Inferior vena cava (IVC) thrombosis Superior vena cava (SVC) thrombosis Pulmonary embolism Patients with VTE related to active cancer, antiphospholipid syndrome, inflammatory bowel disease, vasculitis, a rheumatoid or other autoimmune disorder, a vascular anomaly (e.g., Klippel-Trénaunay syndrome, etc.), heparin-induced thrombocytopenia, or a mechanical cause for DVT (e.g., arm DVT or SVC thrombosis related to a central venous catheter or transvenous pacemaker, portal and/or splenic vein thrombosis related to liver cirrhosis, IVC thrombosis related to retroperitoneal fibrosis, etc.), with hemodialysis arteriovenous fistula thrombosis, or with prior liver or bone marrow transplantation were excluded. Controls. A Mayo Clinic outpatient control group was prospectively recruited for this study. Controls were frequency-matched on the age group (18-29, 30-39, 40-49, 50-59, 60-69, 70-79, and 80+ years), sex, myocardial infarction/stroke status, and state of residence distribution of the cases. We selected clinic-based controls using a controls' database of persons undergoing general medical examinations in the Mayo Clinic Departments of General Internal Medicine or Primary Care Internal Medicine. Additionally persons undergoing evaluation at the Mayo Clinic Sports Medicine Center, and the Department of Family Medicine were screened for inclusion as controls. This study is part of the Gene Environment Association Studies initiative (GENEVA, http://www.genevastudy.org) funded by the trans-NIH Genes, Environment, and Health Initiative (GEI). The overarching goal is to identify novel genetic factors that contribute to venous thrombosis through large-scale genome-wide association studies of 1,300 clinic-based, VTE cases and 1300 clinic-based, unrelated controls. Genotyping was performed at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Inherited Disease Research (CIDR). Data cleaning and harmonization were done at the GEI-funded GENEVA Coordinating Center at the University of Washington.

  Study phs000289

• Genome-Wide Association Study of HCC in Non-Asian USA Population

  This GWAS of HCC relied on existing biological and data resources from 7 USA sites and one Canadian site which allows for the integration of genetic and environmental data. Total of 2199 case patients and 1103 non cancer controls were genotyped. Case patients are defined as patients with pathological or radiological diagnosis of HCC with and without chronic hepatitis C virus infection. Study was restricted to Caucasian population without prior infection with chronic HBV infection. All DNA samples were extracted from peripheral blood. Study population of the participated sites are: Site-1: University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center A hospital based-case-control study was initiated at UT MD Anderson Cancer Center in 2000 and approved by the Institutional Review Board of The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center. Study design was previously described in detailed (1-3). Written informed consent for an interview and for a biological sample was obtained from each participant. At time of diagnosis prior to treatment exposure. Case patients were recruited from the population of patients with newly diagnosed HCC who were evaluated and treated at the institution's gastrointestinal medical and surgical oncology outpatient clinics. Inclusion criteria were as follows: a pathologically confirmed diagnosis of HCC, U.S. residency, and the ability to communicate in English. Patients with concurrent or past history of other types of cancers were excluded. Control subjects were healthy spouses of patients with cancers other than liver, gastrointestinal, lung, or head and neck (smoking-related cancers) undergoing treatment at our institution. Eligibility criteria for control subjects were the same as those for patients, except that control subjects could not have ever had cancer. A short, structured questionnaire was used to screen potential control subjects on the basis of eligibility criteria. Control subjects and patients were recruited simultaneously. Case patients and control subjects were interviewed by well-trained interviewers who followed a written protocol to guide ascertainment and reduce surveillance, interviewer, and recall bias. No proxy interviews were conducted. The interviewers used a structured and validated questionnaire to collect information about demographic characteristics and potential risk factors for HCC such as personal smoking history, alcohol use, medical history, occupational history, and family history of cancer. Blood samples from cases and controls were tested for HBV and HCV. HCV antibodies, hepatitis B surface antigen, and antibodies to hepatitis B core antigen were detected by use of a third-generation enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) (Abbott Laboratories, North Chicago, IL). Important clinical information were retrieved from patients' medical records. Total of 1188 case patients and 278 controls from MD Anderson study were genotyped. Site-2: Mayo Clinic Case patients and controls included in the study from Mayo clinic were recruited as part of Mayo International Hepatobiliary Neoplasia Register and Biorepository. Only USA patients and controls were participated. All cases and controls signed informed consent indicating their willingness to participate in genetic studies. Epidemiological and clinical data were collected from participants and retrieved from medical records. Total of 522 HCC case patients and 182 controls were genotyped in this study. Site-3: Toronto University Molecular Epidemiology of Hepatobiliary Tumors (HBT study, CAPCR 09-0289) is a hospital-based study that includes 1710 patients diagnosed with liver, bile duct or gallbladder adenocarcinoma (Hepatocellular carcinoma - HCC; cholangiocarcinoma - CCA; and gall bladder adenocarcinoma -GBCa) recruited at University Health Network (UHN) between 2009 and 2018. HBT study is a prospective study of cancer patients that collects self-reported demographic and epidemiological data, medical records/clinical information and blood samples for research purposes. Eligible patients recruited between 2009 and March 15 2016 were selected to participate in the Genome-Wide Association Study in Patients with Hepatocellular Carcinoma (GWAS in HCC, CAPCR 15-9943-CE), a sub-study of the HBT study. Eligible prospective patients recruited after March 15 2016 signed the Addendum to the HBT consent form and became eligible to participate in the GWAS in HCC study. Total of 271 cases and 21 controls were genotyped from Toronto University Site-4: University of Pittsburgh The design of the study has been described previously (4-6). Briefly, this population-based study enrolled 120 HCC patients and 230 matched controls from black, Hispanic, and non-Hispanic white residents of Los Angeles County who were between 18 and 74 years of age at diagnosis from January 1995 through December 2001. HCC Cases were identified through the Los Angeles County Cancer Surveillance Program. We sought to recruit up to two control subjects per case from the neighborhoods where HCC patients resided at the time of diagnosis, who were matched to the index case by sex, age (within 5 years), and race (Hispanic white, non-Hispanic white, black). Blood samples (plasma and buffy coat), medical and lifestyle factors were collected from all consenting participants. Total of 65 cases and 60 controls were genotyped in this study Site-5: South Western Dallas Under IRB approval, HCC Cases and controls were prospectively collected since 2015 from the outpatient Liver clinics from Parkland Health and Hospital System and UT Southwestern Medical Center, two large health systems in Dallas TX. A Total of 31 cases and 29 controls were genotyped from site 5. Site-6: Columbia University HCC patients from Columbia are those recruited as part of the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center Database Shared Resource which seeks to recruit all cancer patients for potential future studies. The PI is Dr. Katherine Crew AAAL5871. This resource collects sociodemographic, lifestyle and clinical data on patients as well as a blood sample. Those who indicated on their consent form that they would participate in genetic studies were included. Total of 79 case patients with HCC were genotyped from Columbia University. Site-7: University of Michigan The study population included from University of Michigan were included from a prospective study of with chronic HCV infection recruited in Ann Arbor Patients who had under- gone liver transplantation, known coinfection with HIV, life expectancy <12 months due to extra-hepatic illnesses, or were receiving HCV treatment at enrolment, were excluded. Protocol, surveys, and data forms were developed where each enrolled patient completed the same questionnaire All patients provided written informed consent before enrolment in the study. The study was approved by the institutional review board or ethics committee at the University of Michigan. Detailed study description was previously published (7). Total of 44 cases and 347 controls were genotyped Site-8: Veteran Administration Medical Center in Houston This research including written informed consent form was jointly approved by Institutional Review Boards for the Baylor College of Medicine and the Michael E. DeBakey VA Medical Center in Houston, Texas. Study details have been previously published (8). Briefly, we prospectively recruited consecutive HCV-infected veterans prior to their previously scheduled HCV clinic visit at a large tertiary care VA medical center between May 1, 2009 and December 31, 2012. Patients completed a research assistant (RA) administered survey interrogating medical and risk factor history including lifetime alcohol use, had anthropometric measurements taken, and completed a fasting venipuncture for performance of the FibroSure-ActiTest as a measure of hepatic pathology. We restricted our current analysis to individuals who were: (1) White male veterans between 18 and 70 years; (2) had no history of HCC, liver transplant, decompensated liver disease including ascites, dementia, or psychosis; (3) were serologically-confirmed to have chronic HCV and to be negative for both HIV and active HBV infection; (4) were not currently receiving anti-HCV pharmacotherapy; and (5) had FibroSURE testing shown F3/F4 fibrosis consistent with cirrhosis.

  Study phs001744

• Systolic Blood Pressure Intervention Trial (SPRINT-Imaging)

  Available DataSystolic Blood Pressure Intervention Trial, SPRINT-Imaging, provides access to ECG signals data from the SPRINT clinical trial. The clinical phenotyping and outcomes data from the trial are associated with SPRINT-BioLINCC, phs003483.ObjectiveThe Systolic Blood Pressure Trial (SPRINT) was conducted to test the hypothesis that treating systolic blood pressure to a target of less than 120 mm Hg, as compared to a target of less than 140 mm Hg, would reduce the incidence of cardiovascular disease. BackgroundHypertension is a highly prevalent condition among adults and is a leading risk factor for myocardial infarction and stroke. Further, isolated systolic hypertension is the most common form of hypertension in adults over 50 years of age. Observational studies have shown a monotonic increase in cardiovascular risk with systolic blood pressures above 115 mm Hg; however, general population clinical trials have only documented the benefits of lowering systolic blood pressure to a target of 150 mm Hg. A 2007 expert panel sponsored by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute designated the hypothesis that lowering the systolic blood pressure goal to a level SubjectsA total of 9361 participants were enrolled, with 4,678 randomized to the intensive-treatment group and 4,683 randomized to the standard-treatment group. DesignSPRINT was a randomized, single blinded (outcome adjudicators were blinded to treatment assignment) treatment trial with participants randomized to a systolic blood-pressure target of either less than 140 mm Hg (the standard-treatment group) or less than 120 mm Hg (the intensive-treatment group). Following randomization, baseline hypertensive regimens were adjusted in accordance with study treatment algorithms established for each group. The study formulary included all major classes of antihypertensive agents. Investigators could prescribe other antihypertensive medications, but the use of drug classes with the strongest evidence for reduction in cardiovascular outcomes was encouraged. This included thiazide-type diuretics as the first-line agent, loop diuretics for participants with advanced chronic kidney disease, and beta-adrenergic blockers for participants with coronary artery disease. Medications for participants in the intensive-treatment group were adjusted on a monthly basis to target a systolic blood pressure of less than 120 mm Hg. Medications for participants in the standard-treatment group were adjusted to target a systolic blood pressure of 135 to 139 mm Hg, and the dose was reduced if systolic blood pressure was less than 130 mm Hg on a single visit or less than 135 mm Hg on two consecutive visits. Lifestyle modification was encouraged as part of the management strategy. Participants were seen monthly for the first 3 months and every 3 months thereafter. Demographic data were collected at baseline. Clinical and laboratory data were obtained at baseline and every 3 months thereafter. A structured interview was used in both groups every 3 months to obtain self-reported cardiovascular disease outcomes. Medical records and electrocardiograms were obtained for documentation of events. Incidences of hypotension, syncope, injurious falls, electrolyte abnormalities, and bradycardia that were evaluated in an emergency department were included in adverse event reporting. Occurrences of acute kidney injury or acute renal failure requiring hospitalization were also monitored. The primary outcome was a composite outcome of myocardial infarction, other acute coronary syndromes, stroke, heart failure, or death from cardiovascular causes. ConclusionsThe blood pressure intervention was stopped in August of 2015 (median follow-up of 3.26 years) after the cardiovascular outcome results exceeded the boundary for efficacy at two consecutive time points. Compared with a systolic blood pressure target of less than 140 mm Hg, an intensive systolic blood pressure target of 120 mm Hg resulted in lower rates of fatal and nonfatal major cardiovascular events and death from any cause. Significantly higher rates of some adverse events were observed in the intensive-treatment group.

  Study phs003566

• Heart Failure: A Controlled Trial Investigating Outcomes of Exercise Training (HF-ACTION-BioLINCC)

  Accessing Data Please refer to “Authorized Access” below regarding accessing data through the BioData Catalyst ecosystem. The data from this accession is not available for download through dbGaP.ObjectivesThe HF-ACTION study examined whether exercise training reduces a composite endpoint of all-cause mortality or all-cause hospitalization for patients with left ventricular systolic dysfunction and heart failure symptoms. Background Heart failure (HF) is a major and growing cardiovascular syndrome that is the end result of many cardiovascular disorders. Although evidence-based drug and device therapies decrease mortality, hospitalizations, and HF symptoms and improve quality of life, many patients treated with these regimens often remain burdened by dyspnea and fatigue, diminished exercise tolerance, reduced quality of life, recurrent hospitalizations, and early mortality. Whereas rest was traditionally recommended for HF patients, there has been evidence that physical deconditioning may play a key role in the progression of symptoms and poor outcomes. Previous studies have shown positive effects of exercise training on exercise capacity, quality of life, and biomarkers and suggest that exercise training might improve survival and decrease HF hospitalizations. Nonetheless, there remains a safety concern regarding exercise training in HF and a large scale, multicenter, controlled clinical trial was needed to provide definitive clinical outcome data. Participants A total of 2,331 participants were randomized. 2,130 consented to share data with non-commercial entities, and 1,753 consented to share for commercial purposes. Design All participants underwent baseline cardiopulmonary exercise testing. Test results were reviewed by investigators to identify significant arrhythmias or ischemia that would prevent safe exercise training, to determine appropriate levels of exercise training, and to establish training heart rate ranges. Demographics, socioeconomic status, past medical history, current medications, physical exam, and the most recent laboratory tests were obtained prior to randomization. All participants received detailed self-management educational materials which included information on medications, fluid management, symptom exacerbation, sodium intake, and physical activity. Participants randomized to the exercise training arm first participated in a structured, group-based, supervised exercise program, with a goal of 3 sessions per week for a total of 36 sessions in 3 months. The primary exercises were walking, treadmill, or stationary cycling. Exercise was initiated at 15 to 30 minutes per session at a heart rate corresponding to 60% of heart rate reserve, and was increased after 6 sessions to 30 to 35 minutes duration and 70% of heart rate reserve. Participants began home-based exercise after completing 18 supervised sessions and were to fully transition to home exercise after 36 supervised sessions. The target training regimen for home exercise was 5 times per week for 40 minutes at a heart rate of 60% to 70% of heart rate reserve. Participants randomized to the usual care group were not provided with a formal exercise prescription. To provide comparable levels of attention from study personnel, all participants were called every 2 weeks for the first 9 months, monthly until 24 months of follow-up, and quarterly thereafter. Participants returned for clinic visits every 3 months for the first 2 years of participation and yearly thereafter for up to 4 years. Follow-up assessments included cardiopulmonary exercise testing, a 6-minute walk test, and a physical activity questionnaire. The primary end point was a composite of all-cause mortality or all-cause hospitalization. Secondary end points included all-cause mortality, the composite of cardiovascular mortality or cardiovascular hospitalization, and the composite of cardiovascular mortality or HF hospitalization. Conclusions After adjustment for highly prognostic predictors of the primary end point, exercise training was associated with modestly significant reductions for both all-cause mortality or hospitalization and cardiovascular mortality or heart failure hospitalization.

  Study phs003599

• Health and Retirement Study (HRS)

  Introduction to V2: This data release comprises data from the V1 release combined with approximately 3,000 additional samples, collected during the HRS 2010 field period. The 2010 data include samples from a random half of the new cohort enrolled in 2010 along with a significant expansion of the minority sample. Description: The University of Michigan Health and Retirement Study (HRS) is a longitudinal panel study that surveys a representative sample of approximately 20,000 people in America over the age of 50 every two years. Supported by the National Institute on Aging (NIA U01AG009740) and the Social Security Administration, the HRS explores the changes in labor force participation and the health transitions that individuals undergo toward the end of their work lives and in the years that follow. The study collects information about income, work, assets, pension plans, health insurance, disability, physical health and functioning, cognitive functioning, and health care expenditures. Through its unique and in-depth interviews, the HRS provides an invaluable and growing body of multidisciplinary data that researchers can use to address important questions about the challenges and opportunities of aging. Because of its innovation and importance, the HRS has become the model and hub for a growing network of harmonized longitudinal aging studies around the world. Origins of the HRS. As the population ages it is increasingly important to obtain reliable data about aging and topics that are relevant to a range of policy issues in aging. To address this need, the National Institutes on Aging (NIA) established a cooperative agreement with the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research to collect such data. The HRS launched data collection in 1992 and has re-interviewed the original sample of respondents every two years since then. By adding new cohorts and refreshing the sample, the HRS has grown to become the largest, most representative longitudinal panel study of Americans 50 years and older. HRS Study Design. The target population for the original HRS cohort includes all adults in the contiguous United States born during the years 1931-1941 who reside in households, with a 2:1 oversample of African-American and Hispanic populations. The original sample is refreshed with new birth cohorts (51-56 years of age) every six years. The sample has been expanded over the years to include a broader range of birth cohorts as well. The target population for the AHEAD survey consists of United States household residents who were born in 1923 or earlier. Children of the Depression (CODA) recruits households born 1924-1930, War Babies 1942-47, Early Boomers 1948-53, and Mid-Boomers 1954-59. Data collection includes a mixed mode design combining in-person, telephone, mail, and Internet. For consenting respondents, HRS data are linked at the individual level to administrative records from Social Security and Medicare claims. Genetic Research in the HRS. The HRS has genotyped 2.5 million single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) on respondents using Illumina's Human Omni2.5-Quad (Omni2.5) BeadChip. The genotyping was performed by the NIH Center for Inherited Disease Research (CIDR). Saliva was collected on half of the HRS sample each wave starting in 2006. In 2006, saliva was collected using a mouthwash collection method. From 2008 onward, the data collection method switched to the Oragene kit. Saliva completion rates were 83% in 2006, 84% in 2008, and 80% in 2010 among new cohort enrollees. HRS Phenotypic data. Phenotypic data are available on a variety of dimensions. Health measures include physical/psychological self-report, various health conditions, disabilities, cognitive performance, health behaviors (smoking, drinking, exercise), physical performance and anthropomorphic measures, and biomarkers (HbA1c, Total Cholesterol, HDL, CRP, Cystatin-C). Data are also available on health services including utilization, insurance and out-of-pocket spending with linkage to Medicare records. Economic measures include employment status/history, earnings, disability, retirement, type of work, income by source, wealth by asset type, capital gains/debt, consumption, linkage to pensions, Social Security earnings/benefit histories. There is also extensive information on family structure, proximity, transfers to/from of money, time, social and psychological characteristics, as well as a wide range of demographics. Performance on a cognitive test combining immediate and delayed word recall was selected as an example trait for the dbGaP data release. In the immediate word recall task the interviewer reads a list of 10 nouns to the respondent and asks the respondent to recall as many words as possible from the list in any order. After approximately five minutes of asking other survey questions, the respondent is asked to recall the nouns previously presented as part of the immediate recall task. The total recall score is the sum of the correct answers to these two tasks, with a range of 0 to 20. Researchers who wish to link to other HRS measures not in dbGaP will be able to apply for access from HRS. A separate Data Use Agreement (DUA) will be required for linkage to the HRS data. See the HRS website (http://hrsonline.isr.umich.edu/gwas) for details.

  Study phs000428

• MGHBoston_Molpheno_Closed

  This dataset contains Whole Genome Sequencing and, if available, RNA-sequencing and/or ATAC-sequencing data of 17 lymphoblastoid cell lines derived from patients with complex genomic rearrangements. Patients have phenotypes in category of intellectual disability and/or multiple congenital anomalies. Data access is closed.

  Dataset EGAD00001004866

• EuCANCan: EUropean-CANadian Cancer network

  The EUropean-CANadian Cancer network (EuCANCan) is a project aiming to develop a federated network of aligned and interoperable infrastructures for the homogeneous analysis, management and sharing of genomic oncology data for Personalized Medicine. This initiative, funded by the European Commission and the Canadian Institutes of Health and coordinated by the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC), is expected to process and provide the scientific community with around 30-35 thousand patient samples from different types of cancer, coming from different nodes involved in this project, during the four years of the project. Data generated as part of primary studies, often in small hospitals or research centers, is hardly reused by other projects or groups. EuCANCan is proposed to foster the homogenisation and discoverability of cancer samples from very different sources for the whole community. These efforts will help paving the way to future standardised and global genomics projects, specially for those participant countries that eventually integrate the methodology and infrastructure generated during the project. “The more data we have access to the more and better discoveries. We attempt to overcome the legal and technical limitations in order to generate, gather and exploit bigger datasets as well as answer more ambitious questions”. These were some of the words Dr. David Torrents, main coordinator of the project, shared with a regional radio during the kick-off meeting of the project, on February 11th, 2019. The EUCANCan network will be composed of reference nodes in Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin, Heidelberg, Paris and Toronto which have established strong research and clinical programs in the field of genomic oncology. The Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG), specifically the European Genome-phenome Archive (EGA), is among the leading institutions. Its exhaustive experience in biomedical data archival and secure distribution is considered key for crucial developments within the project. It is also notable the recent inclusion of EUCANCan in the list of GA4GH driver projects. Further information and details can be found in the following links: InsideHPC BSC official description Techweek (Spanish)

  Blog eucancan

• Clonal dynamics after allogeneic haematopoietic cell transplantation using genome-wide somatic mutations - TGS

  Allogeneic haematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT) replaces the stem cells responsible for blood production with those harvested from a donor, and is received by 40,000 patients worldwide each year. To quantify dynamics of long-term stem cell engraftment, we sequenced whole genomes of 2,824 single-cell-derived haematopoietic colonies from blood samples of 10 donor-recipient pairs taken 9-31 years after HLA-matched sibling HCT. With younger donors, 10,000-50,000 stem cells had engrafted and were still contributing to haematopoiesis at time of sampling, but estimates were 10-fold lower with older donors. Engrafted stem cells made multilineage contributions to myeloid, B-lymphoid and T-lymphoid populations, although individual clones often showed biases towards one or other mature cell type. Recipients had lower clonal diversity than matched donors, equivalent to ~10-15 years of additional ageing, arising from up to 25-fold greater expansion of stem cell clones. An HCT-related population bottleneck alone could not explain these differences: instead, phylogenetic trees evinced two distinct modes of HCT-specific selection. In 'pruning selection', cell divisions underpinning recipient-enriched clonal expansions had occurred in the donor, preceding transplant - their selective advantage derived from preferential mobilisation, harvest, survival ex vivo or initial homing. In 'growth selection', cell divisions underpinning clonal expansion occurred through proliferative advantage in the recipient's marrow after homing - clones with multiple driver mutations especially demonstrated this pattern. Uprooting stem cells from their native environment and transplanting them to foreign soil exaggerates selective pressures, distorting and accelerating the loss of clonal diversity compared to the unperturbed haematopoiesis of donors.

  Dataset EGAD00001010874

• Maintenance of Brain Tumor Profile on Organotypic Brain Slice Culture (OBSC)

  We used uncultured tumor resection tissue from an NF2 mutation-driven grade II meningioma (MG-II) to investigate whether tumors engrafted onto organotypic brain slice cultures (OBSCs) maintained the genetic profile of the parent tumor. We prepared three groups of samples for whole exome sequencing (WES) from the same pool of dissociated MG-II tissue. Group HT is the original uncultured human tumor tissue (n = 3). Group CL is the parent tumor tissue expanded in standard in vitro cell culture until the minimum number of cells required for WES had grown. Because of initial cell loss and subsequent clonal expansion, this required six passages over the span of approximately one month (n = 3). Group BSHT is the uncultured tumor resection tissue engrafted onto OBSCs and subsequently dissected from the OBSCs at the conclusion of our standardized assay length (4 days; n = 4). WES analysis showed that tumor tissue engrafted onto OBSCs maintained a significant genetic resemblance to the parent tumor, while tumor tissue expanded in vitro displayed a distinctly different profile. Furthermore, the mutational profiles of all four BSHT biological replicates were markedly similar, indicating that each OBSC-engrafted tumor indeed contained a representative sample of the original patient tumor. A closer look at the hallmark NF2 mutations existing within all samples revealed that while all samples from the original tumor (HT1-3) and the OBSC-engrafted tumor (BSHT1-4) maintain the frame shift deletion at V24, this mutation was lost in all samples expanded in vitro (CL1-3) and replaced by mutations in other areas. Together, this data suggests that the rapid assay design and tumor-accommodating niche of our OBSC platform enables effective maintenance of the original patient tumor profile. The BBsplit algorithm from the BBtools suite was run on all samples to eliminate rat DNA contamination in the BSHT samples as well as to account for any biases that may result as a part of that process. Only the reads that were binned to the human reference were used for subsequent analysis. Reads were then mapped to the GRCh38 version of the human genome with BWA v0.7.17 and realigned together with ABRA2 v.23. Quality control was implemented using the GATK/Picard v4.1.7.0 toolkit. Somatic variants were called for each sample using the MuTect2 algorithm v4.1.7.0. Variants were merged into a single cohort variant call file and then converted to MAF via vcf2maf v1.6.21 tool. Variants were annotated using VEP v87. To identify mutations with potentially high biological impact, multiple filtering steps were applied to somatic mutation calling. First, we selected only the somatic variants that passed all filters from the MuTect2 FilterMutectCalls algorithm and second, only high/moderate impact (change coding) variants as defined by the VEP annotation were further analyzed. Over 1900 single nucleotide variants (SNVs) were detected across all samples. Figures that summarized the results were generated using maftools.

  Study phs003268

• Prognostic and therapeutic significance of leukemia subtypes and minimal residual disease measurements in pediatric acute lymphoblastic leukemia treated with contemporary risk-directed trial: a cohort study

  Background Genomic analyses to identify leukemia subtypes and refinement of minimal residual disease (MRD) determination are two recent advances that would have substantial impact on the management of children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). However, the combined application of these two approaches to determine the prognostic and therapeutic significance of MRD measurement and full spectrum of leukemia subtypes in the context of contemporary risk-directed therapy has not been studied comprehensively.MethodsBetween October 29, 2007 and March 26, 2017, 598 consecutive children with newly diagnosed ALL were enrolled in a clinical trial at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Patients were provisional classified according to the presenting clinical and laboratory features including immunophenotype and cytogenetics. Patients with ETV6-RUNX1 and high hyperdiploid B-progenitor ALL were provisionally included in the low-risk groups; those with TCF3-PBX1, hypodiploidy and T-cell ALL in the standard (intermediate)-risk group; and patients with BCR-ABL1, KMT2A and early T-cell precursor ALL in the high-risk group. Final risk assignment was based primarily on MRD levels measured by flow cytometry on Day 15 (≥1%) and Day 42 (<0.01% or ≥1%) of remission induction. Using genomic classification based on cytogenetics and genomic analysis (single nucleotide polymorphism array analysis and transcriptome, exome, and genome sequencing), patients were classified into 17 subtypes. The primary aim was to determine the event-free survival, overall survival and cumulative risk of relapse according to specific leukemia subtypes and MRD levels on Days 8, 15 and 42 of remission induction. This clinical trial was registered at ClinicalTrials.gov, number NCT00549848.FindingsPatients with ETV6-RUNX1, high hyperdiploidy and DUX4-rearranged B-ALL all received low- or standard-risk therapy, and had the highest 5-year event-free survival rates: 98.4% (95% CI, 95.9-100), 95.3% (91.2-99.4), and 95.0% (84.2-100), respectively. All 142 patients with Day 8 MRD<0.01%, except two with KMT2A-rearranged ALL and one with TCF3-PBX1, were in continuous complete remission. The TCF3-PBX1, PAX5alt, T-cell, early T-cell precursor, iAMP21 and hypodiploid ALL had intermediate outcome with 5-year event-free survival rates ranging from 80.0% (39.4-100) to 88.2% (71.7-100). Patients with KMT2A-rearranged, BCR-ABL1, BCR-ABL1-like and ETV6-RUNX1-like ALL had the worst outcomes, with 5-year event-free survival rates between 64.1% (43.9-84.3) and 76.2% (51.9-100), despite most patients receiving standard- or high-risk therapy. Treatment intensification based on MRD and genotype improved outcome. Relapse did not occur in any of the patients with ETV6-RUNX1, DUX4-rearranged, TCF3-PBX1, iAMP21, ZNF384-rearranged, hypodiploid, or BCR-ABL1-like B-ALL who had day 15 MRD≥1% and received standard-risk therapy. However, day 42 MRD<0.01% did not preclude relapse in patients with intermediate-risk or unfavorable subtypes including TCF3-PBX1, PAX5alt, T-cell, iAMP21, BCR-ABL1, BCR-ABL1-like, ETV6-RUNX1-like, KMT2A-rearranged, and MEF2D-rearranged ALL, despite intensified treatment in the standard- or high-risk arms. InterpretationContemporary risk-directed treatment based on genotypes and MRD can cure virtually all patients with ETV6-RUNX1, hyperdiploid>50 and DUX4-rearranged ALL. While intensified treatment improve outcome for patients with high MRD during induction, substantial proportions of patients with intermediate-risk or unfavorable subtypes would still relapse even achieving negative MRD status at the end of induction and require novel therapeutics to improve outcome.

  Study EGAS00001004739

• Detroit Research on Cancer Survivors (ROCS) and Disparities and Cancer Epidemiology - Colorectal Cancer (DANCE)

  The goals for this study were as follows:1. Enroll a total of 5,060 African Americans newly diagnosed with cancer into the Detroit Research on Cancer Survivors (Detroit ROCS) Cohort. These population-based cases will be ascertained through the Detroit Metropolitan Detroit Cancer Surveillance System (MDCSS), a founding member of the NCI SEER Program. Participation at baseline will include a written, web-based, or telephone interview, saliva and/or blood collection, and tumor block retrieval, with detailed cancer-related information coming from the MDCSS registry and medical records.2. Enroll a subgroup of colorectal cancer patients identified through the Louisiana Tumor Registry (LTR). An additional 500 colorectal cancer patients, approximately half non-Hispanic white and half African American, will be identified through the LTR and enrolled into the ROCS protocol. The survey is the same survey administered to the ROCS cohort. The Louisiana (“DANCE-CRC”) cohort will not be followed beyond baseline, and blood will not be collected (tumor tissue, however, will be collected, deidentified, and sent for processing through Dr. Rozek's laboratory at Georgetown University).The proposed cohorts will provide for a broad research agenda evaluating cancer outcomes in African Americans across a variety of factors from individual, provider, health care system and community perspectives. These factors include tumor characteristics driving individualized treatment planning, quality of life after a diagnosis and recurrence. Utilizing the MDCSS registry, we will enroll a large population-based sample of African-American cases with lung, breast, colorectal, and prostate cancers and their caregivers resulting in a cohort that will provide substantial benefit to the cancer research community. KCI has a strong history of research in the African-American community and the faculty represents a breadth of experience that includes clinical oncology, genetic epidemiology, environmental exposures, quality of life, treatment decision making, racism/discrimination, and health behaviors. Drs. Schwartz and Beebe-Dimmer have been and will continue to be generous collaborators with other institutions to ensure that this resource will be extensively utilized. The proposed overall cohort will be the only one of its kind, to our knowledge, filling a substantial gap in our understanding of the determinants driving cancer outcomes in African Americans. In addition to registry data detailing cancer specifics, yearly surveys have collected information about individualized treatment experiences, heath histories, family histories, quality of life after a diagnosis, recurrence and caregiving. Population: Adult cancer survivors (see inclusion criteria in next section) Molecular Technologies: Genotyping: Infinium Expanded Multi-Ethnic Genotyping Array (MEGAEX) DNA Sequencing: Illumina NovaSeq X Plus using XLEAP-SBS (sequencing by synthesis) Whole genome sequencingPrincipal Findings: The preliminary data collected reinforces differences by race in factors affecting cancer outcomes. Variants in DNA damage repair genes and HOXB13 may be important cancer risk factors for Black men diagnosed with prostate cancer, and are more frequently observed in men with a family history of cancer. ROCS participants reported high rates of a family history of cancer. The high rate of eligibility for Cancer genetic counseling among ROCS participants supports the need for interventions to increase referrals and uptake of genetic counseling among African Americans 60% of ROCS participants reported participating in regular physical activity (PA), with 24% reporting ≥150 min/wk. There were no differences by sex, but prostate cancer survivors were the most likely to report participating in regular PA, whereas lung cancer survivors were the least likely. Survivors who reported participating in regular PA reported higher health-related quality of life and lower depression. More African American than White survivors reported financial hardship and limiting care. More White than African American survivors reported utilizing assets, while more African American survivors reported cancer-related debt. Data available in dbGaP: Individual phenotype data Individual genotype data Individual sequencing dataSample types: Germline DNA

  Study phs003116

• Alzheimer's Disease Sequencing Project (ADSP)

  NOTICE OF CHANGE IN LOCATION FOR ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE SEQUENCING PROJECT (ADSP) GENETIC AND PHENOTYPIC DATA: ADSP whole exome and whole genome sequence data that are shared through dbGaP were mapped to the Genome Reference Consortium human genome GRCh37 (build 37). These data are from the Discovery Phase of the project (described below) and will continue to be available at this site. Please see the ADSP Design page for the complete study description. All data that are mapped to GRCh38 (hg38) are being shared through the NIA Genetics of Alzheimer's Disease Data Storage Site (NIAGADS) Data Sharing Service (DSS). For instructions on how access the ADSP Build 38 data that are shared through NIAGADS DSS, visit the Application Instructions page. STUDY DESCRIPTION FOR dbGaP BUILD 37 ADSP DATA: The overarching goals of the Alzheimer's Disease Sequencing Project (ADSP) are to: (1) identify new genomic variants contributing to increased risk of developing Alzheimer's Disease (AD), (2) identify new genomic variants contributing to protection against developing AD, and (3) provide insight as to why individuals with known risk factor variants escape from developing AD. These factors will be studied in multi-ethnic populations in order to identify new pathways for disease prevention. Such a study of human genomic variation and its relationship to health and disease requires examination of a large number of study participants and needs to capture information about common and rare variants (both single nucleotide and copy number) in well phenotyped individuals. Using existing samples from NIH funded and other studies, three NHGRI funded Large Scale Sequencing and Analysis Centers (LSAC) - Broad, Baylor, and Washington University - produced the DNA sequence data. Variant call data are being made available to the scientific community through NIH-approved data repositories. Statistical analysis of the sequence data is anticipated to identify new genetic risk and protective factors. The ADSP will conduct and facilitate analysis of sequence data to extend previous discoveries that may ultimately result in new directions for AD therapeutics. Analysis of ADSP data will be done in two phases. The Discovery Phase analysis (2014-2018) is funded under PAR-12-183. The entire Discovery dataset contains whole-genome sequencing data on 584 subjects from 113 families, and pedigree data for > 4000 subjects; whole exome sequencing data on 5096 cases 4965 controls; and whole exome sequence data on an additional 853 (682 Cases [510 Non-Hispanic, 172 Hispanic]), and 171 Hispanic Control subjects from families that are multiply affected with AD. The Replication Phase (2016-2021) analysis will be funded under RFA-AG-16-001 and RFA-AG-16-002 and is expected to include a combination of genotyping and sequencing approaches on at least 30,000 subjects. Targeted sequencing will be done by the LSACs. GRCh37 Data Releases The first ADSP data release occurred on November 25, 2013. It included the whole-genome sequencing data in BAM file format on 410 individuals. The second ADSP data release occurred on March 31, 2014, and included the whole-genome sequencing data in BAM file format for an additional 168 individuals. The third ADSP data release occurred on November 03, 2014 and included whole-exome sequencing data in BAM file format for 10,939 individuals. The fourth ADSP data release occurred on February 13, 2015 and included revised ethnic data for subjects with whole-exome sequencing data. The fifth ADSP data release occurred on July 13, 2015 and included whole-genome genotypes and updated phenotypes as well as changes to pedigree structures and sample IDs. The sixth ADSP data release occurred on December 8, 2015, and included whole-exome genotypes and updated phenotypes as well as changes to subject IDs. This seventh ADSP data release on April 12, 2016 includes: (1) WES and WGS SNV VCF files (2) WES and WGS Indel PLINK files ADSP Data Available through dbGaP: ADSP - Whole Genome Sequencing ADSP - Whole Exome Sequencing Comments DNA-Seq (BAM) n=578 n=10913 Sequence data available (plus n=38 replications w/out genotype data) Concordant SNV Genotypes (PLINK format) N/A n=10913 QC'ed genotypes that are concordant between the Atlas (Baylor's) and GATK (Broad's) calling pipelines (a subset of the consensus genotype set) Consensus Genotypes (PLINK and VCF format) n=578 n=10913 QC'ed genotypes that are concordant between Atlas and GATK pipelines as well as those that that were called uniquely by Atlas or GATK Concordant Indel Genotypes (PLINK format) n=578 n=10913 QC'ed genotypes that are concordant between the Atlas and GATK calling pipelines Phenotype Data n=4735 n=10913 Data of n=53 phenotype variables available (plus administrative data), including APOE genotype. WGS phenotypes include data of connecting family members. Please use the release notes provided by dbGaP to obtain detailed information about study release updates. The ADSP data portal provides a customized interface for users to quickly identify and retrieve files by covariates, phenotypes, and data properties such as sequencing facility or coverage. For more information about the ADSP study and the data portal, please visit https://www.niagads.org/adsp/.

  Study phs000572

• A Genome-Wide Association Study in Patients Experiencing Musculoskeletal Adverse Events on NCIC CTG Trial MA.27 Evaluating Aromatase Inhibitors as Adjuvant Therapy in Early Breast Cancer. A Collaboration Between the NIH Pharmacogenetics Research Network and the RIKEN Yokohama Institute Center for Genomic Medicine.

  Source of Patients The source of the patients for this genome-wide case control study was MA.27, which was conducted as a multi-cooperative group effort under the auspices of the NCI Breast Cancer Intergroup of North America. The NCIC Clinical Trials Group (CTG) serves as the coordinating group, with participation by the NCI-sponsored North Central Cancer Treatment Group, Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group (ECOG), Southwest Oncology Group, and Cancer and Leukemia Group B (CALGB). MA.27 involved postmenopausal women with histologically confirmed and completely resected invasive breast cancer with surgical margins clear of invasive carcinoma and DCIS in the following TMN categories (AJCC Version 6): pT1, pT2, pT3; pNx, pN0, pN1, pN2, pN3 (only when the sole basis is presence of 10 or more involved axillary nodes); MO. The primary tumor must have been ER and/or progesterone receptor positive. Patients were stratified by lymph node status at diagnosis, prior adjuvant chemotherapy, and trastuzumab use and were randomized to 5 years of adjuvant therapy with anastrozole or exemestane. The trial was activated on May 26, 2003, and reached its accrual objectives on July 31, 2008, after the randomization of 6827 North American patients, with the majority (79%) providing DNA and consent for genetic testing. Non-North American patients were also entered by the International Breast Cancer Study Group but they did not contribute DNA. From 2003 to December 21, 2004, patients also underwent a second randomization to celecoxib 400 mg twice daily or placebo but, after the entry of 1,622 patients, this treatment was discontinued because of reports of increased cardiovascular risk associated with celecoxib. Case Definition for Musculoskeletal Adverse Events Cases were defined to have had at least one of the following six MSAE): 1. pain - joint, 2. pain - muscle, 3. pain - bone, 4. arthritis, 5. joint - function, 6. musculoskeletal - other. Cases were required to have at least grade 3 toxicity, according to the NCI Common Terminology Criteria for Adverse Events v3.0, or go off treatment for any grade of the six MSAEs; and were required to have had an MSAE within the first two years (i.e., a MSAE occurring after 2 years was not be considered a case). Subjects were excluded from the case group who met the case definition while on celecoxib or in the three months after stopping celecoxib but subjects were allowed to be cases if they developed their first MSAE more than three months after stopping celecoxib. Study Design The design was a nested matched case-control study with two controls selected for each case. Random matching from the potential control group (i.e., risk-set sampling such that controls had at least the same length of followup as the timing of the case event) was done by matching the case on the following factors: 1. treatment arm (exemestane vs. anastrozole, blinded), 2. prior adjuvant chemotherapy (yes vs. no), 3. age at start of treatment (+/- 5 years), 4. Celecoxib allocation (yes vs. no). Attempts were made to exactly match each case with two controls according to the above criteria. If, however, controls could not be exactly matched, "close" matching was used to define a distance between each case and all potential controls in an optimal matching algorithm. Race is a potential confounding factor, and 94% of the MA.27 population is Caucasian, 3% are Black, 1% Asian, 1% American Indian, and 1% are of unknown race. Because there are so few non-Caucasian participants, was restricted to only Caucasians. Following identification of cases and controls, the list was sent to the CALGB Pathology Coordinating Office (PCO) at Ohio State University Medical Center for plating of the samples. Other patient factors that might influence the association of SNP genotypes with a MSAE, either as confounding factors or as effect modifiers, were included as investigational covariates. These include 1. body mass index (BMI), 2. bisphosphonate use, 3. fractures in past 10 years, 4. baseline ECOG performance status, 5. prior hormone replacement therapy, 6. prior adjuvant radiotherapy, and 7. prior taxane treatment. An Honest Broker Process was utilized to ensure patient confidentiality. Genotype Assays and Quality Control A GWAS was performed with the Illumina Human610-Quad at the RIKEN Center for Genomic Medicine. The DNA for all of the samples were adjusted to a concentration of 50 to 100 ng/µL in a final volume of 50 µL. The 96-well plates were designed to have a unique distribution pattern with x duplicates per plate to evaluate genotype concordance. Samples with <98% call rate were removed from analyses. SNPs with ambiguous call will be excluded using the following criteria: 1. low signal intensity of each allele, 2. low cluster separation score, 3. SNP call rate <0.98, 4. SNPs with Hardy Weinberg Equilibrium p-value <0.001 were excluded. X-chromosome SNPs were used to validate female sex and quality control measures were examined across the different submitting centers. For all pairs of subjects, the percentage of matching genotypes were computed to screen for unexpected duplicate samples. All SNPs found to be associated with MSAE were subjected to visual inspection of the cluster plots to verify that the genotype clustering was adequate.

  Study phs000210

• EGA file encryption types

  EGA file encryption The European Genome-Phenome Archive (EGA) stands as a significant initiative in the field of genomics, facilitating the secure storage and sharing of vast amounts of genomic data. Jointly hosted by the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG) and the European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI), the EGA offers a robust infrastructure for managing encrypted data, ensuring the privacy and integrity of sensitive genomic information. Both CRG and EMBL-EBI play pivotal roles in the EGA, each institution bringing unique expertise in managing different types of encryptions. EMBL-EBI EGACryptor encryption system, while CRG utilises Crypt4GH, resulting in two distinct encryption file types: cip and c4gh, respectively. How can I check the file encryption? To access your dataset of interest on the European Genome-Phenome Archive (EGA) and determine the corresponding encryption file extension, please follow these step-by-step instructions: Utilise the search or navigation features provided on the EGA website to locate the dataset you are interested in. Once you find the dataset webpage, click on the "Files" tab, typically located on the dataset's webpage. Upon reaching the "Files" tab, you will be presented with a table containing comprehensive information about the files associated with the dataset. This table will include various columns, such as "File Name," "Size," and "Location." The "Location" column is particularly relevant for determining the encryption file extension. Figure 1: File table showing all the information available for the files in a dataset. This table is specific for each dataset. To identify the encryption file extension corresponding to a specific file, locate the "Location" column in the table. If the file is archived in Spain, the file will have the .c4gh extension, indicating that it is encrypted using Crypt4gh. Conversely, if the file is archived in the UK, the encrypted file extension will be .cip, indicating the usage of EGACryptor for encryption. It is worth noting that a file can be available in both locations, meaning it will be accessible with both file extensions (.c4gh and .cip). This allows users to choose the encryption method that aligns with their preferred platform or analysis tools.

  Documentation check-encryption-type

• Convergent somatic mutations in effectors of insulin signalling in chronic liver disease

  Chronic liver disease is associated with metabolic dysregulation, liver failure and hepatocellular carcinoma. We analysed somatic mutations from 1202 genomes across 32 liver samples, including normal controls, alcohol-related and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. Five of 27 patients with liver disease carried hotspot driver mutations in FOXO1, the major transcription factor downstream of insulin signalling. FOXO1 mutations were independently acquired by up to 5 distinct clones within the same patient’s sample, and impaired insulin-mediated nuclear export of FOXO1. GPAM, which produces storage triacylglycerol from dietary calories, also had significant excess of mutations, similarly exhibiting convergent evolution within biopsies. Telomeres were shorter in diseased than normal liver, with attrition more pronounced in larger clones. Multiple independent acquisitions of drivers within one small liver sample imply that such mutations could affect hundreds of grams of tissue across the whole organ, potentially contributing to systemic metabolic dysfunction.

  Dataset EGAD00001006255

• The last addition to the list of clonal evolution studies in the EGA

  Tumours of different types may arise from a single cell with at least one malignant mutation. Accumulation of subsequent hits generates lineages of cells with different cancer transformation power; thus, every clone follows an autonomous evolution, and several clones may co-exist into the same solid or liquid tumour. Clonal evolution studies are not new: the conceptual power of this approach has been recognized since the early ’80, especially in leukaemia patients. Nonetheless, these studies greatly benefit from recent technological improvements -machineries and protocols-, which enable ever-increasing sequencing depth, allowing the detection of low frequency variants and consequently more tumour clones. Note: the figure belongs to the original paper and is owned by the authors. Researchers at the University of Kyoto in Japan, have indeed used state of the art knowledge to investigate the clonal evolution of chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) in a large panel of patients. CML progresses from a majoritarian benign chronic phase into an often fatal blast crisis phase. It is nowadays known that blast crisis are triggered by genetic instability and disrupted DNA repair, which lead to accumulation of DNA mutations. The use of thyrosine kinase inhibitors targeting the Philadelphia chromosome have enormously improved the treatment of blast crisis, nonetheless resistant patients are still a medical challenge. Yotaro Ochi and collegues used Whole Exome Sequencing of paired chronic phase and blast crisis samples to depict the genetic landscape of progression from the first to the second stage of the disease (as illustrated in their figure). Their results were published in Nature Communication on this May 2021. They used a dataset previously deposited at the EGA (EGAS00001003071) and their new generated data have been made available under accession number EGAS00001005075. Their analysis of the occurring mutations contribute to understanding the mechanisms of CML evolution and therefore develop a protocol for early management of patients with a TKI resistance signature. Up to date, the EGA hosts 99 clonal evolution studies, developed in several cancer types, including myeloma, renal carcinomas and ovarian cancer, in addition to various leukaemia subtypes, where this approach has been more widely applied and produced important results and seminal papers. From a pan-cancer point of view, the definition of tumour architecture through clonal evolution studies is instrumental to unravel the mechanisms of disease progression and treatment-resistance insource. At the EGA, we are honoured to contribute to exciting and important science advances with our service!

  Blog the-last-addition-to-the-list-of-clonal-evolution-studies-in-the-ega

• Durvalumab Plus Tremelimumab Alone or in Combination with Low-Dose or Hypofractionated Radiotherapy in Metastatic Non-Small-Cell Lung Cancer Refractory to Previous PD(L)-1 Therapy: an Open-Label, Multicentre, Randomised, Phase 2 Trial

  Brief SummaryThis randomized phase II trial studies the side effects of durvalumab and tremelimumab and to see how well they work with or without high or low-dose radiation therapy in treating patients with colorectal or non-small cell lung cancer that has spread to other parts of the body (metastatic). Immunotherapy with durvalumab and tremelimumab, may induce changes in body's immune system and may interfere with the ability of tumor cells to grow and spread. Radiation therapy uses high energy x-rays to kill tumor cells and shrink tumors. Giving durvalumab and tremelimumab with radiation therapy may work better in treating patients with colorectal or non-small cell lung cancer.Detailed DescriptionPRIMARY OBJECTIVES:I. To assess safety and tolerability of combined checkpoint blockade with MEDI4736 (durvalumab) and tremelimumab alone or with high or low-dose radiation in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). (NSCLC Cohort) II. To compare the overall response (excluding the irradiated lesion[s]) between combined checkpoint blockade with MEDI4736 and tremelimumab alone or combined checkpoint blockade with low or high dose radiation. (NSCLC Cohort) III. To assess safety and tolerability of combined checkpoint blockade with MEDI4736 and tremelimumab with high or low-dose radiation. (Colorectal Cohort) IV. To determine the overall response rate (excluding the irradiated lesion[s]) with combined checkpoint blockade with MEDI4736 and tremelimumab with either low or high dose radiation. (Colorectal Cohort)SECONDARY OBJECTIVES:I. To estimate median progression-free survival and overall survival. (NSCLC Cohort) II. To determine local control within the irradiated field(s) and abscopal response rates. (NSCLC Cohort) III. To evaluate associations between PD-L1 expression as well as levels of infiltrating CD3+, CD8+ T-cells and overall response. (NSCLC Cohort) IV. To explore changes in PD-L1 expression, circulating T-cell populations, T-cell infiltration, ribonucleic acid (RNA) expression, spatial relationship of immune markers, and mutational burden as a result of low or high dose radiation. (NSCLC Cohort) V. To estimate median progression-free survival and overall survival. (Colorectal Cohort) VI. To determine local control within the irradiated field and abscopal response rates. (Colorectal Cohort) VII. To evaluate associations between PD-L1 expression as well as levels of infiltrating CD3+ CD8+ T-cells and overall response. (Colorectal Cohort) VIII. To evaluate changes between PD-L1 expression as well as levels of infiltrating CD3+, CD8+ T-cells induced by targeted low or high dose radiation. (Colorectal Cohort) IX. To explore changes in circulating T-cell populations, T-cell infiltration, RNA expression, spatial relationship of immune markers, and mutational burden as a result of low or high dose radiation. (Colorectal Cohort)OUTLINE: Patients are assigned to 1 of 2 cohorts. NOTE: This Study is only for Cohort 1. Please see phs003294 for Cohort 2COHORT 1: Patients with NSCLC are randomized to 1 of 3 arms.ARM A: Patients receive tremelimumab and durvalumab and as in Arm C. Beginning at week 2, patients receive high dose radiation therapy once per day (QD) over 10 days for up to 3 fractions.ARM B: Patients receive tremelimumab and durvalumab and as in Arm C. Beginning at week 2, patients receive low dose radiation therapy every 6 hours twice per day (BID) on weeks 2, 6, 10 and 14.ARM C: Patients receive tremelimumab intravenously (IV) and durvalumab IV over 60 minutes every 4 weeks for up to 16 weeks in the absence of disease progression or unacceptable toxicity. Patients then receive durvalumab IV over 60 minutes 4 weeks after last combination dose for up to 9 additional doses.COHORT 2: Patients with CRC are randomized to 1 of 2 arms.ARM A: Patients receive tremelimumab intravenously (IV) and durvalumab IV over 60 minutes every 4 weeks for up to 16 weeks in the absence of disease progression or unacceptable toxicity. Patients then receive durvalumab IV over 60 minutes 4 weeks after last combination dose for up to 9 additional doses. Beginning at week 2, patients receive high dose radiation therapy once per day (QD) over 10 days for up to 3 fractions.ARM B: Patients receive tremelimumab intravenously (IV) and durvalumab IV over 60 minutes every 4 weeks for up to 16 weeks in the absence of disease progression or unacceptable toxicity. Patients then receive durvalumab IV over 60 minutes 4 weeks after last combination dose for up to 9 additional doses. Beginning at week 2, patients receive low dose radiation therapy every 6 hours twice per day (BID) on weeks 2, 6, 10 and 14.After completion of study treatment, patients are followed for up to 12 weeks.Official TitleA Phase 2 Study of MEDI4736 (Durvalumab) and Tremelimumab Alone or in Combination With High or Low-Dose Radiation in Metastatic Colorectal and NSCLC Conditions Metastatic Colorectal CarcinomaMetastatic Lung Non-Small Cell CarcinomaStage IV Colorectal Cancer AJCC v7Stage IV Lung Non-Small Cell Cancer AJCC v7Stage IVA Colorectal Cancer AJCC v7Stage IVB Colorectal Cancer AJCC v7 Intervention/Treatment Biological: DurvalumabRadiation: Radiation TherapyBiological: Tremelimumab Other Study ID Numbers NCI-2016-01325NCI-2016-01325 ( Registry Identifier ) (REGISTRY: CTRP (Clinical Trial Reporting Program))17-71910021 ( Other Identifier ) (OTHER: Dana-Farber - Harvard Cancer Center LAO)10021 ( Other Identifier ) (OTHER: CTEP) Molecular Technologies / AssaysCyTOFIHCmIFOlinkRNAseqWES

  Study phs003295

• Drug development for pediatric cancers: the importance of patient' s genomic data re-use

  Cancer in children is uncommon and the overall prognosis for most pediatric cancers is good. However, while the combined survival rates have improved over the last decades, certain childhood malignancies, such as high-grade gliomas or metastatic sarcomas, still remain incurable in most patients. New strategies for targeting those devastating diseases are imperative, and patient genomic data can become a key asset in the process [1]. The Pediatric Cancer Genome Project’s datasets At EGA, we store over 500 datasets with sequencing data from pediatric cancer patients. A remarkable case is the datasets belonging to the Pediatric Cancer Genome Project (PCGP) from St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital–Washington University (Table 1 - EGAS list). PCGP is an ambitious effort to identify the mutations that drive childhood cancer and find new cures. Those datasets include 600 patients with complete tumor and normal genomes from 15 different tumor types. PCGP datasets have been an important resource for various studies that pooled genomic data from different public and in-house datasets to perform extensive genomic characterizations and publish comprehensive pan-cancer pediatric studies [2],[3]. Other interesting pediatric cancer datasets are from the Pediatric Brain Tumor Consortium, Sickkids or ICGC PedBrain project. How data reuse impacts drug development for pediatric cancers Recently, in October 2024, Nature Communications published a work led by the University of Michigan where authors used data from EGA (PCGP) check the table below as part of their strategy to pursue the identification of new tumor vulnerabilities susceptible to becoming novel therapeutic targets in diffuse midline glioma. Diffuse midline gliomas (DMG) are treatment-resistant and uniformly fatal pediatric brain tumors. The prognosis of this brainstem tumor is dismal with a median overall survival of 9–12 months from diagnosis. In this study, the authors first developed a lab model of the disease and reanalyzed data from the EGA to identify genes potentially linked to tumor severity. This approach revealed involvement of specific metabolic pathways, suggesting new possibilities for therapeutic intervention. In mice, the study shows that the use of statins can improve survival. For a brief overview of the underlying science, diffuse midline gliomas present intratumor heterogeneity with subpopulations of less-differentiated oligodendrocyte precursors and more differentiated astrocytes. Authors established in vitro models to recapitulate both phenotypes and identify metabolic programs in both subpopulations. To determine the clinical relevance, the authors re-used gene expression data from 76 DMG patients identifying a gene signature predicting decreased overall survival. After extensive metabolic characterization of subpopulations, authors defined strategies to target specific metabolic vulnerabilities. Pre-clinical experiments in mice using OXPHOS inhibitors and statins showed a reduction in tumor burden and increased overall survival [4]. In this scenario, the re-use of high-quality patient’s sequencing data appeared as an advantageous strategy to support the clinical relevance of in-vitro and pre-clinical findings. On the other hand, in rare conditions such as childhood cancer, the availability of public datasets and the possibility of pooling data from different sources can be the only way to obtain impactful results that lead to improvements for patients. References Davidoff, A. M. Pediatric Oncology. Seminars in pediatric surgery 19, 225–233 (2010). Gröbner, S. N. et al. The landscape of genomic alterations across childhood cancers. Nature 555, 321–327 (2018). Venu Thatikonda et al. Comprehensive analysis of mutational signatures reveals distinct patterns and molecular processes across 27 pediatric cancers. Nature Cancer 4, 276–289 (2023). Mbah, N. E. et al. Therapeutic targeting of differentiation-state dependent metabolic vulnerabilities in diffuse midline glioma. Nature Communications 15, (2024). Datasets and Studies ID Title Access Policy Year EGAD00001000134 Driver mutations in histone H3.3 and chromatin remodelling genes in paediatric glioblastoma McGill-DKFZ Pediatric Brain Tumour Consortium 2016 EGAS0000100192 Somatic Histone H3 Mutations in Diffuse Intrinsic Pontine Gliomas and Non-Brainstem Paediatric Glioblastomas St. Jude Children's Research Hospital - Washington University Pediatric Cancer Genome Project 2017 EGAS00001000575 Whole genome sequencing and whole exome sequencing of DIPG tumors and matched normal tissue The hospital for sick children ("SickKids") 2016 EGAD00001000792 Exome sequencing reads of paediatric glioblastoma McGill-DKFZ Pediatric Brain Tumour Consortium 2016 EGAD00001002006 Whole genome sequencing of paediatric glioblastoma in the ICGC PedBrain project ICGC PedBrain project 2016

  Blog drug-development-for-pediatric-cancers

• Privacy Notice for Helpdesk service

  Privacy Notice for EGA Helpdesk service This Privacy Notice explains what personal data is collected by the specific service you are requesting, for what purposes, how it is processed, and how we keep it secure. Note that this service collects personal data directly provided by the user, and also collects personal data from users that is provided by other organisations. 1. Who controls your personal data and how to contact us? European Genome- Phenome Archive - EGA offers a service for permanent archiving and sharing of all types of personally identifiable genetic and phenotypic data resulting from biomedical research projects, jointly managed by European Molecular Biology Laboratory – European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) and Fundació Centre de Regulació Genòmica - Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG). EMBL-EBI and CRG represent joint Data Controllers’ of processing of your personal data. They and their Data protection officers may be contacted for data protection queries and for exercising your rights under Section 8. You may contact EMBL-EBI, represented by dr. Thomas Keane, by: email at: tk2@ebi.ac.uk or post at EMBL-EBI, Wellcome Genome Campus, CB10 1SD Hinxton, Cambridgeshire, UK. EMBL’s Data Protection Officer may be contacted by: telephone at +49 6221 387-8590, email at dpo@embl.org , or post at EMBL Heidelberg, Data protection officer, Meyerhofstraße 1, 69117 Heidelberg, Germany. You may contact CRG, whose EGA team is represented by dr. Jordi Rambla de Argila, by: email at jordi.rambla@crg.eu, or post at Fundació Centre de Regulació Genòmica - Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG), Dr.Aiguader 88, PRBB Building, 08003 Barcelona, Spain. CRG Data protection officer may be contacted by: email at dpo@crg.eu post at Fundació Centre de Regulació Genòmica - Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG), C/ Dr. Aiguader, 88, PRBB Building, 08003 Barcelona, Spain. 2. Which is the lawful basis for processing personal data? We process your personal data on the grounds of important public interest. For monitoring your activities on the website, we process your personal data on the grounds of important public interest. Such legal basis is found in Article 5(1)(a) of EMBL Internal Policy No 68 on General Data Protection (hereinafter IP 68), which is equivalent to Article 6 (1)(e) of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (hereinafter GDPR) and upon which personal data are processed for the achievement of the aims laid down in 1973 agreement establishing EMBL, such as the promotion of the cooperation in the fundamental research, in the development of advanced instrumentation and in advanced teaching in molecular biology and dissemination of information. 3. What personal data is collected from users of the service? How do we use this personal data? We collect the following personal data from users of the service: Name Email address Job title Date and time when the support request was sent We will use your personal data for the following purposes: To provide uninterrupted user access to the service To better understand the needs of the users and guide future improvements of the service To create anonymous usage statistics 4. Who will have access to your personal data? The personal data will be disclosed to: Authorised staff in the data controller’s institutions acting on data controller`s behalf and instructions. 5. Will your personal data be transferred to third countries (i.e. countries not part of EU/EEA) and/or international organisations? There are no personal data transfers to third countries or international organizations. 6. How long do we keep your personal data? Any personal data directly obtained from you will be retained as long as the service is live. Such duration serves the purpose of enabling scientific research and ensures legal compliance and facilitates internal and external audits if they arise. By contrast, the log files for the data categories related to anonymous usage statistics (raw web service logs) are processed only for 30 days and thereafter erased. 7. The joint Data Controllers provide these rights regarding your personal data You have the right to: Not be subject to decisions based solely on an automated processing of data (i.e. without human intervention) without you having your views taken into consideration. Request at reasonable intervals and without excessive delay or expense, information about the personal data processed about you. Under your request we will inform you in writing about, for example, the origin of the personal data or the preservation period. Request information to understand data processing activities when the results of these activities are applied to you. It must be clarified that rights under points 4 and 5 are only available whenever you need support whilst using our website. For other processing based on the grounds of important public interest you cannot exercise your rights to object, rectify or erase your personal data according to the Article 13(2)(a)(b) of IP 68 (equivalent to Article 17(3)(b)(d) and Article 21(6) of the GDPR). 8. Supervisory authority If you wish to complain against the processing of your personal data, you may do so by post at: EMBL Heidelberg, Data Protection Committee, Meyerhofstraße 1, 69117 Heidelberg, Germany, or Autoritat Catalana de Protecció de Dades (Catalan Data Protection Authority), C/Rosselló 214, Esc A, 1r 1a, Barcelona 08008, Spain. Published at: February 6, 2019

  Documentation data-protection/privacy-notice/ega-helpdesk

• Targeted_sequencing_of_genes_recurrently_mutated_in_AML

  Background Massively parallel sequencing technology has transformed cancer genomics. It is now feasible, in a clinically relevant time-frame, for a clinically manageable cost, to screen DNA from patient tumours for mutations essentially genome-wide. The challenge for personalised medicine will be to increase the sample size to thousands or tens of thousands of well-characterised cases in order to attain sufficient statistical power to stratify patients accurately across the complexity and genomic heterogeneity expected for most of the common tumour types. Currently, whole genome sequencing on this scale is not feasible, and targeted sequencing of relevant portions of the genome will be required. Pilot data We have developed protocols for large-scale, multiplexed sequencing of 100-200 genes in thousands of samples. Essentially, using robotic technology, genomic DNA from the cancer specimen is processed into sequencing libraries with unique DNA barcodes, thereby allowing sequencing reads to be attributed to the sample they derive from. Currently, these sequencing libraries can be generated in a 96-well format using fully automated protocols, and we are exploring methods to expand this to a 384-well format. The sequencing libraries are pooled and hybridized to custom sets of RNA baits representing the genomic regions of interest. Sequencing of the pulled-down libraries is done in pools of 48-96 samples per lane of an Illumina Hi-Seq. This protocol is already implemented at the Sanger Institute. We have published proof that somatic mutations in novel cancer genes can be identified from exome-wide sequencing. In unpublished pilot data, we have established the feasibility of robotic library production, custom pull-down, and multiplexed sequencing of barcoded libraries for 100 known myeloid cancer genes across 760 myelodysplasia samples. Highlights of the data thus far analysed reveal that the coverage is remarkably even between samples; when 96 samples are run, average coverage per lane of sequencing is ~250, with 90-95% of targeted exons covered by >25 reads; known mutations can be discovered in the data set; and the protocol is amenable to whole genome amplified DNA. The bioinformatic algorithms for identification of substitutions and indels in pull-down data are well-established; we have pilot data proving that copy number changes, LOH and genomic rearrangements in specific regions of interest can also be identified by tiling of baits across the relevant loci. Proposal We propose to apply this methodology to 10000 samples from patients with AML enrolled in clinical trials over the last 10-20 years. Oncogenic point mutations and potentially genomic rearrangements will be identified, and linked to clinical outcome data, with a view to undertaking the following sorts of analyses: • Identification of co-occurrence, mutual exclusivity and clusters of driver mutations. • Correlation of prognosis with driver mutations and potentially gene-gene interactions • Exploration of genomic markers of drug response Ultimately, we would like to be in a position to release the mutation data together with matched clinical outcome data to genuine medical researchers via a controlled access approach, possibly within the COSMIC framework (www.sanger.ac.uk/genetics/CGP/cosmic/). The vision here is to generate a portal whereby a clinician faced with an AML patient and his / her mutational profile can obtain a ‘personalised’ prediction of outcome, together with a fair assessment of the uncertainty of the estimate. With a sufficient sample size, there would also be the potential to develop decision support algorithms for therapeutic choices based on such data.

  Study EGAS00001000408

• WTSI CGP Data access committee

  Dac EGAC00001000000

• The Dutch Microbiome Project Batch 2

  The Dutch Microbiome Project (DMP) data includes shotgun metagenomic sequencing of faecal samples 8,208 Dutch individuals. Paired-end sequencing was performed using Illumina HiSeq 2000 platform. Data is archived in two batches to facilitate easier data access and upload to EGA. Batch 2 of DMP includes ~400 samples.

  Dataset EGAD00001007501

• The Melbourne Urological Research Alliance (MURAL) Collection of Patient-Derived Models of Prostate Cancer

  1. Low-Dose Carboplatin Modifies the Tumor Microenvironment to Augment CAR T Cell Efficacy in Human Prostate Cancer Models.Single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) was performed to analyze the transcriptional modifications in the tumor microenvironment of prostate cancer patient-derived xenografts (PDX). The analyzed PDX tumor was PDX-287R from the MURAL collection of PDXs (PMID: 34413304). Mice harboring PDX tumors were treated with the carboplatin chemotherapy, and tumors were harvested 3 weeks later. RNA sequencing (RNA-Seq) was used to define immune and non-immune cell populations and anti-tumor innate immune signaling within the tumor microenvironment.To investigate the response of tumor cells to carboplatin treatment in more detail, RNA-Seq was performed on FACs-isolated tumor cells from PDX-287R at one week post-treatment. Gene set enrichment analysis showed an enrichment for apoptotic pathways, with significantly increased expression of the pro-apoptotic genes FAS, BAX, BBC3, IFI6, and JUN. Previously, carboplatin has been shown to activate the cGAS/STING pathway, and here we also found an increase in STING signaling, with an enrichment for the cytosolic DNA sensing pathway and increased expression of STING1, STAT1 and STAT2. There was also a significant increase in the expression of genes involved in T cell chemotaxis, including CXCL10, CXCL11, and CCL20. Collectively, carboplatin-induced cell death in tumor cells likely initiated a pro-inflammatory phenotype in prostate cancer PDXs.2. Co-Targeting BET, CREBBP, and EP300 Inhibits Neuroendocrine Signaling in Androgen Receptor-Null Prostate Cancer.The landscape of castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC) is characterized by a multitude of phenotypes, among which neuroendocrine disease holds a prominent position, each displaying unique responses to therapeutic interventions. The efficacy of inhibitors targeting BET and CREBBP/EP300 in prostate cancer treatment is widely acknowledged, primarily due to their ability to attenuate androgen receptor (AR) signaling. However, the effectiveness of these inhibitors in prostate cancers devoid of AR remains uncertain.This investigation sought to elucidate the role of BRD4, CREBBP, and EP300, which are co-expressed in both AR-positive and AR-null prostate cancer. Our study revealed that a compound targeting all three proteins, NEO2734, exhibited efficacy in suppressing the growth of organoids from both AR-positive and AR-null tumors, as evidenced by alterations in viability, size, and cellular composition. Furthermore, NEO2734 treatment consistently led to transcriptional downregulation of cell cycle pathways across various models. In the context of neuroendocrine prostate cancer (NEPC), NEO2734 demonstrated notable efficacy. Treatment with NEO2734 resulted in decreased expression of ASCL1 and other neuroendocrine markers (including SYP) , accompanied by a reduction in tumor growth in vivo. These findings collectively underscore the potential of epigenome-targeted inhibitors in impeding the growth of neuroendocrine prostate cancer, by disrupting lineage regulators in a phenotype-dependent manner. Consistent with the NEPC organoids and explants, NKX3-1 was upregulated in NEO2734-treated PDXs.In this study, we examined the impact of NEO2734 treatment on 6 organoids (treated for 24 hrs), 3 explants treated with JQ1 (for 48 hrs) and 2 PDXs (at two time points) using bulk RNA sequencing (RNA-Seq). These results are available through this dbGaP submission. The implications of these results warrant further exploration and development of compounds possessing similar activities for clinical applications. The ability of NEO2734 to mitigate the growth of both AR-positive and AR-null prostate cancer underscores its potential as a versatile therapeutic agent. Moreover, its efficacy in targeting neuroendocrine phenotypes offers promising avenues for addressing a subtype of CRPC that poses significant clinical challenges. In conclusion, this study sheds light on the intricate interplay between epigenetic regulators and prostate cancer phenotypes. The observed effects of NEO2734 on growth inhibition and phenotype-specific disruption highlight the importance of continued research into compounds with similar epigenome-targeting mechanisms for advancing precision medicine approaches in the treatment of prostate cancer.3. Defining Focal Neuroendocrine Differentiation as a Transcriptionally Distinct Form of Prostate Cancer Pathology Characterized by the Expression of Androgen ReceptorsThe study aimed to understand the transcriptional differences among different neuroendocrine pathologies of prostate cancer. The study hypothesized that the diverse neuroendocrine pathology observed in prostate might be attributable to differences in transcriptional level that remain hidden in bulk RNA-Seq data. To investigate, we employed scRNA-seq to generate gene expression profiles of 18,632 individual tumor cells from 9 PDX models representing five distinct neuroendocrine pathologies of prostate cancer. Our analysis identified 3-8 transcriptionally distinct sub-populations per PDX. The expression of key oncogenic signaling pathways and master regulator activity varied across in neuroendocrine pathologies, with each type of pathology displaying a unique set of transcriptional sub-populations. We discovered that, like the amphicrine pathology, focal neuroendocrine differentiation (focal NED) cells maintain androgen receptor (AR) signaling. However, the expression profiles of focal NED cells differed from the other pathologies, indicating it should be considered as a distinct type of neuroendocrine pathology in prostate cancer. Analysis of copy number alterations suggested little clonal divergence between focal NED cells and neighboring adenocarcinoma cells, emphasizing the transcriptional distinctiveness of focal NED.Overall, the findings suggest potential differences in treatment approaches for tumors from prostate cancer patients showing neuroendocrine pathology, especially focal NED.4. Reprogramming of Androgen Receptor Activity in Castration-Resistant Prostate Cancer is Shaped by Truncated Variants.Under the influence of treatments that target the androgen receptor (AR) axis, prostate cancer cells undergo various changes to the AR gene. This includes the production of truncated AR variants that lack the ligand binding domain and are constitutively active. However, the exact role of these truncated variants in shaping the AR signaling axis and their importance in therapy resistance is not yet fully understood. By examining the AR cistrome in a group of patient-derived prostate cancer models with different mechanisms of castration resistance, we observed diverse changes in AR activity in metastatic prostate cancer, including castration-resistant models. Specifically, we identified a unique subset of tumors characterized by the expression of ARv567es, a variant resulting from structural rearrangements of the AR gene. Tumors positive for ARv567es showed a distinct AR binding profile and epigenome compared to those without ARv567es, which was linked to an altered transcriptional profile. The presence of ARv567es is associated with poor responses to treatments, such as castration and bipolar androgen therapy (BAT), regardless of the presence of full-length AR. This involves disruption of the autoregulatory loop that controls AR gene transcription and reduced transcriptional responses to treatment. Overall, this study demonstrates that ARv567es can lead to transcriptional reprogramming in advanced prostate cancer and drive therapy resistance. 5. The MURAL Collection of Prostate Cancer Patient-Derived Xenografts Enables Discovery Through Preclinical Models of Uro-Oncology.We created a comprehensive PDX resource for prostate cancer to facilitate the rapid and systematic evaluation of new therapies. This collection includes 59 tumors from 30 patients, gathered between 2012 and 2020, aligning with the availability of abiraterone and enzalutamide in the clinic. The PDXs cover the clinical, pathological, and genomic spectrum of prostate cancer, ranging from treatment-naïve primary tumors to castration-resistant metastases. We characterized heterogeneity in adenocarcinoma and neuroendocrine phenotypes using bulk and single-cell RNA sequencing. Additionally, organoids were cultured from PDXs, enhancing our preclinical study capabilities. Employing a 1x1x1 design, we quickly identified tumors with responses to combination therapies. To manage the distribution of PDXs, we established the Melbourne Urological Research Alliance (MURAL). This PDX collection significantly enhances our ability to test and prioritize effective treatments for future clinical trials in prostate cancer.6. Prostate Cancer Associated Fibroblasts Have Distinct Morpho-Mechanical Features That Are Associated With Patient Outcome.The tumor stroma, including cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs), has a crucial role in tumor progression. This study focused on the morphological and mechanical properties of CAFs and normal prostatic fibroblasts. The findings revealed that CAFs had distinct morphological and mechanical characteristics compared to normal fibroblasts, such as differences in nuclear size, shape, F-actin arrangement, cellular volumes, and elasticity. Additionally, the study correlated these biophysical properties with transcriptomic data, identifying pathways and cellular components linked to the observed changes. Overall, high-throughput assessments of biophysical properties in prostate cancer cells and stromal components may serve as predictive tools for patient outcomes and help identify new therapeutic approaches targeting the tumor stroma.

  Study phs003369

• HTAN MCL Pre-Cancer Atlas Pilot Project - Targeted Sequencing Development Study

  The HTAN-MCL Pre-Cancer Atlas Pilot Project (PCAPP) is the result of a collaboration between the seven members of the MCL consortium. Across four organ types, PCAPP's goal is to collect and profile pre-malignant lesions for gene expression, DNA mutations, single-cell gene expression and immune-environment. Most PML are small in size and only available come from formalin fixed paraffin embedded archived tissue. The primary goal of PCAPP is to 1) understand the logistical challenges of PML specimen collection, 2) document technical limitations of the assays that are specific to the PML and 3) overcome them to support the generation of a more comprehensive Pre-Cancer Atlas in the future. The current upload provides RNA and DNA sequencing from participants with DCIS who were studied at the University of San Diego and the University of Vermont. Description of the overall study: A. Background/Significance One of the critical barriers to developing new approaches for cancer detection and prevention is the lack of understanding of the key molecular and cellular changes that cause cancer initiation and progression. Unlike the extensive work that has been done profiling advanced stage tumors, few studies have comprehensively profiled the molecular alterations found in precancerous tissues. Premalignant lesions are currently characterized by histologic changes that precede the development of invasive carcinoma1,2.These lesions can often be identified in regions surrounding an invasive tumor or in biopsies taken from patients undergoing diagnostic evaluation for suspicion of cancer. Currently, limited metrics exist to identify lesions that will likely progress to carcinoma and require intervention from those that will naturally regress or remain stable3,4. Characterization of the molecular alterations in premalignant lesions and the corresponding changes in the microenvironment would hasten the development of biomarkers for early detection and risk stratification as well as suggest preventive interventions to reverse or delay the development of cancer. Our pilot study will establish the feasibility of transcriptomic, genomic and immune profiling of FFPE premalignant lesions from multiple organ sites, collected and profiled with uniform SOPs across multiple institutions within the MCL consortium. We will characterize the molecular alterations in precancerous lesions and the corresponding microenvironment in four major organ sites, in order to uncover the molecular and cellular determinants of premalignancy, and establish standardized sequencing and immunohistochemistry protocols on FFPE precancerous tissue. We will also evaluate the technical feasibility of single nuclei sequencing of small FFPE pre-cancer lesions. Successful completion of the proposed pilot study will set the stage for expansion and development of a comprehensive Pre-Cancer Atlas (PCA) as part of the NCI's moonshot.B. Specific Aims Aim 1: Collect premalignant lesions (PML) and their associated microenvironment via LCM from FFPE tissue across four organ sites (breast, lung, pancreas & prostate). Aim 2: Perform bulk RNA and DNA seq on premalignant FFPE samples (and flash frozen tissue where available) and compare the genomic/transcriptomic alterations within and across organ sites. C. ApproachAim 1: Collect premalignant lesions (PML) and their associated microenvironment via LCM from FFPE tissue across four organ sites (breast, lung, pancreas & prostate). MethodsI. Patient Population/Sample Collection: Overview of the sites collecting PML tissue from the respective organs is provided in Table 1 and a full description of the biospecimens to be obtained is described in detail for each organ type below. Table 1. Breakdown of cohort by tissue type and collection site.Organ siteBreastLungPancreasProstateType of PMLDCISAAH, Squamous Dysplasia/CISIPMNsPINCollection of PatientsUCSF/UCSDUVMBU*/UCLAVanderbilt/MoffittMDACC*JHUStanford*# of Patients201920 (10 of each type)20 (10 of each type)242020Total patients per Organ39402440Note: single nuclei/cell RNA-Seq will be performed on 4-5 FFPE samples from each of the organ types 1. DCIS lesions from breast tissue: DCIS lesions will be collected from 39 patients (20 from UCSF/UCSD & 19 from UVM) with primary low or high-grade DCIS diagnosed from a breast core biopsy. Subsequent resected lumpectomy or mastectomy tissues will be prospectively sampled in the vicinity of the prior biopsy site using multiple approaches: 1) Live cells (heterogeneous mix) will be obtained as a cell scrape slurry from the lesion surface or by fine needle aspirate (FNA); 2) For a subset of specimens where size is sufficient, a block of breast tissue with DCIS will be fresh-frozen; 3) The remainder of the specimen will be taken for routine formalin-fixation and paraffin-embedding (FFPE). The FFPE sample will be annotated to identify the matched FFPE tissue block adjacent to the fresh-frozen sample and will be sectioned for use in bulk and single nuclei sequencing . We will dissect DCIS, adjacent normal and when available, associated carcinoma. In addition, when possible, normal tissue will be collected from a tissue block lacking lesions as well as collection of blood. A subset of patients (n = 5 | FFPE, flash frozen and fresh) will be sent to the Broad Institute for single nuclei/cell sequencing.2. AAH and squamous dysplastic/CIS lesions from airway and lung tissue: For squamous cell lung cancer, we will collect endobronchial biopsies from abnormal airway regions identified on autofluroscence bronchoscopy or identify PMLs in the margins of resected lung tissue. We will study 20 patients (5 each from BU/UCLA/Vanderbilt/Moffitt) with pre-invasive squamous lesions (moderate-severe dysplasia or carcinoma in situ (CIS)) identified on pathologic examination. LCM of the premalignant region and adjacent normal epithelium will be performed as well as the invasive tumor for those collected from the resection margin (n=5 from UCLA). On a subset of lesions collected at bronchoscopy (n=5), we will collect additional biopsies that will be flash frozen and fresh for single nuclei and cell sequencing, respectively, performed at the Broad Institute. In parallel to the work at the Broad, BU will perform single cell RNA-seq on these freshly cell sorted tissues (n = 5). Blood will be collected on all patients for genomic studies. For lung adenocarcinoma, we will collect resected FFPE lung tissues from 20 patients (10 from UCLA and 10 from Vanderbilt/Moffitt) with early stage lung adenocarcinoma that harbor atypical adenomatous (AAH) premalignant lesions in the resection margin. We will LCM multiple AAH regions (3-5 per patient) as well as adjacent regions of normal epithelium and invasive adenocarcinoma. In addition, blood will be collected on all patients for genomic studies. 3. IPMNs from pancreatic tissue: For pancreatic cancer PML, we will collect low and high grade lesions from 24 patients representing macroscopic Intraductal Papillary Mucinous Neoplasms (IPMN) (n=24) from surgically resected specimens along with blood samples. Archival FFPE specimens of microscopic PanIN lesions, occurring multi-focally adjacent to invasive PDAC, and archival IPMN lesions (with or without associated invasive cancer), along with the adjacent normal tissue, will undergo LCM and utilized for bulk DNA and RNA sequencing. If matched frozen tissues are available for a subset of these FFPE samples, we will bank for comparison of profiles. Because IPMNs are macroscopic lesions, they provide an opportunity for obtaining the samples fresh and therefore can be used for single cell sequencing (in contrast to PanINs). Therefore, 5 freshly obtained IPMNs will be used for the single cell RNA sequencing studies performed at both the Broad Institute and MDACC, and the matched FFPE and/or frozen sections from these lesions (obtained from the adjacent PML) will be sent to Broad Institute as a pilot to assess "single nuclei" RNA sequencing.4. PINs from prostate tissue: For prostate cancer PML, there will be 40 samples of Prostatic Intraepithelial Neoplasia (PIN) collected between the Stanford and JHU sites (20 cases per site). At the Stanford site, 20 prostate specimens detected by PSA screening who have/will undergo surgery (radical prostatectomy) for clinically localized disease will make up the final cohort. The age range of the participants would be 40-75, and we anticipate that 18 will be Caucasian, 1 Asian and 1 Latino or African American based on the practice demographics practice at Stanford. Clinical and MRI data will also be collected for these samples. We will collect low grade (e.g. Gleason score of 6/Grade group 1; n=10) and high grade (Gleason score 4+3=7 or higher/Grade group 3 or higher; n=10) PINs from FFPE samples that have prostate carcinoma. In addition to obtaining LCM archival samples of low and high grade PIN, we will also obtain normal prostatic epithelial from the peripheral, central and transition zones as well as multiple samples of prostate carcinoma in order to obtain the spectrum of Gleason grades in the carcinoma as needed. LCM samples will be used for bulk DNA and RNA sequencing. In addition, single cells will be dissected from FFPE samples to prepare single cell RNA seq libraries using techniques developed at Stanford, and FFPE tissue will be sent to the Broad for single nuclei sequencing. When available, flash frozen and fresh samples from these prostates will be archived and prepared for single nuclei and cell sequencing, respectively, at the Broad Institute and at Stanford (single cell only). JHU will also capture 10 cases (5 grade group 1 and 5 grade group 2) of high grade PIN, normal and invasive adenocarcinoma using frozen sections from fresh frozen tissues. When possible these will be from the same patients as the FFPE samples. Since frozen sections can be quite challenging to morphologically determine high grade PIN from normal epithelium, for these samples we will perform a number of additional tissue-based characterizations. These will include a multicolor combined basal cells (p63 and CK903) and PIN/carcinoma markers (AMACR) referred to in the cocktail as "PIN4", c-MYC (referred to as MYC) protein5, by IHC and mRNA by in situ hybridization (AM De Marzo, Q Zheng unpublished observations), telomere length by in situ hybridization6 and the 5'ETS/45S rRNA7. For these slides, the whole slides will be scanned with a Hammamatsu Nanozoomer with a 40x objective and regions of interest will be annotated as a guide for LCM.II. Laser-capture microdissection (LCM): FFPE tissue blocks will be sectioned at 7μm thickness and serial sections will be stained with H&E. LCM will be performed utilizing standard LCM systems, such as Leica LMD7000 and ArcturusXT at each site. Regions of premalignancy will be dissected and RNA/DNA will be extracted from microdissected cells using the Qiagen All Prep DNA/RNA FFPE Kit. Aim 2: Perform bulk RNA and DNA seq on premalignant FFPE samples and compare the genomic/transcriptomic alterations within and across organ sites. Rationale: There have been limited studies characterizing the genomic and transcriptomic landscape of premalignant lesions associated with breast, pancreatic, lung or prostate cancers. Characterizing the molecular determinants of premalignant disease that are unique and shared across multiple organs will enable new candidate biomarkers for early detection and novel therapeutic strategies for early intervention. MethodsBulk RNA-seq of LCM FFPE tissue: All participating sites will perform bulk RNA-seq in accordance with SOPs developed at BU. In brief, total RNA will be isolated from LCM'd lesion and associated microenvironment tissue using the Qiagen All Prep DNA/RNA FFPE Kit and quality will be assessed with the Agilent Bioanalyzer. Libraries will be generated with the Illumina TruSeq Access kit (for FFPE samples). They will be sequenced on the Illumina HiSeq2500 with 75base-pair paired-end reads. Quality of FASTQ files will be assessed with FastQC. Reads will be aligned to the human genome with STAR and gene-level and isoform-level expression will be quantified with RSEM. Splice junction saturation, transcript integrity, and biotype distributions will be calculated for each sample with RSeQC. DESeq2 and EdgeR will be used to identify associations between gene expression profiles and clinical variables while controlling for confounding covariates. BU will serve as an RNA-seq Core to assess reproducibility of FFPE RNA-seq methods across sites. We will perform RNA-seq according to the SOP listed above on a subset of samples for each organ type (total n ~ 20). Bulk seq of DNA from FFPE tissue: All participating sites will perform targeted or whole exome-seq (WES) in accordance with SOPs. In brief, DNA from laser captured material will be isolated using the Qiagen All Prep DNA/RNA FFPE Kit and undergo stringent quality control to ensure high quality input material for genomic profiling. Purified DNA (ideally 100-200 ng) will be used for library preparation and amplification, followed by next generation sequencing using standard protocols distributed by CDMG. Exome-seq methods are considered standardized, thus we will not need a DNA-seq Core to assess reproducibility across sites. We anticipate local centers will use Illumina paired end reads, following the following general approach. 1) DNA library preparation: Paired-end libraries will be prepared following the manufacturer's protocols (Illumina and Agilent), fragmented to 150-200 bp 2) Capture of targeted exome: Whole exome capture will be carried out using the protocol for Agilent's SureSelect Human All Exon kit. Purified capture products will be amplified using the SureSelect GA PCR primers (Agilent) for 12 cycles. 3) Sequencing will be carried out for the captured libraries using at least 100 bp paired-end reads. To achieve high level sensitivity and accuracy for detecting all the mutations in the whole exome, each sample will be sequenced at 200X mean depth. 4) Read mapping and alignment and variant analysis: Sequence short reads will be aligned to a reference genome (NCBI human genome assembly build 38) using BWA-MEM. Local realignment of aligned reads will be performed using Genome Analysis Toolkit (GATK).Data QC: To ensure scientific rigor and consistency among sites in RNA and DNA processing we will include a preliminary analysis of steps in processing and analysis. Protocols for extraction of high quality RNA and DNA from formalin fixed paraffin embedded (FFPE) tissues, which will be used extensively in these studies continue to improve and may have variable implementation among the sites participating in this study. To evaluate consistency of preliminary steps in processing and downstream analyses, we will initially distribute slides from one large FFPE fixed cancer of origin from prostate, breast, lung and pancreatic cancer. Analysis of these samples will allow us to review the DNA and RNA characteristics (yield, purity and strand length) among sites. Downstream analysis of these same samples will also allow us to compare among sites the consistency of variant calls among centers. We will be able to identify if there are some times of calls (such as small insertion deletions) that are more variable among centers versus other types of calls (such as relative gene expression or single base pair substitutions) that we expect to be less variable and to characterize the reliability of findings across sites. We are also including a 5% blind duplicate analysis of RNA sequencing. Samples will be analysed by the participating genomics cores without knowledge of the phenotype. RNA seq and CNA analyses are normalized for batch effects. We will also compare the observed sex to the self-reported sex as based on RNA profiles and exome sequencing of X chromosome genes as another check for processing accuracy and sample management. D. References 1. Wacholder, S. Precursors in Cancer Epidemiology: Aligning Definition and Function. Cancer Epidemiol. Prev. Biomark. 22, 521-527 (2013). PMID: 23549395.2. Berman, J. J. Precancer: The Beginning and the End of Cancer. (Jones & Bartlett Learning, 2011).3. Nasiell, K., Nasiell, M. & Vaćlavinková, V. Behavior of moderate cervical dysplasia during long-term follow-up. Obstet. Gynecol. 61, 609-614 (1983). PMID: 6835614.4. Merrick, D. T. et al. Persistence of Bronchial Dysplasia Is Associated with Development of Invasive Squamous Cell Carcinoma. Cancer Prev. Res. (Phila. Pa.) 9, 96-104 (2016). PMID: 26542061.5. Gurel, B. et al. Nuclear MYC protein overexpression is an early alteration in human prostate carcinogenesis. Mod. Pathol. Off. J. U. S. Can. Acad. Pathol. Inc 21, 1156-1167 (2008). PMID: 18567993.6. Meeker, A. K. et al. Telomere shortening is an early somatic DNA alteration in human prostate tumorigenesis. Cancer Res. 62, 6405-6409 (2002). PMID: 12438224.7. Guner, G. et al. Novel Assay to Detect RNA Polymerase I Activity In Vivo. Mol. Cancer Res. MCR 15, 577-584 (2017). PMID: 28119429.

  Study phs002225

• The Federated EGA network

  In the last 10 years, most human omics data has been generated in the context of research consortia while recently there has been an emergence of large cohorts of human data generated by healthcare initiatives. Many countries in Europe now have nascent personalised medicine programmes. Thus, human genomics is shifting from being predominantly research-driven to being funded through healthcare systems. Genetic data generated in a healthcare context is subject to more stringent information governance than research data and nonetheless all data must adhere to national data protections laws. In this context, EGA identified the need for the development of a federated network to enable secure sharing of data whilst enabling genetic data to remain within the jurisdiction in which it was generated. The Federated EGA is designed to support national data management requirements for genomic and clinical data collected from citizens as part of healthcare or biomedical research projects. It includes a secure authorised access mechanism to support research use of these data across Europe and worldwide. We have engaged with over 14 ELIXIR countries to develop the federation model. The EGA federated configuration is composed of Central EGA, Federated EGA nodes and Community EGA nodes: Central EGA offers international submissions and helpdesk support, currently EGA co-managed by EMBL-EBI and CRG, Federated EGA nodes offer EGA services to researchers within their national jurisdiction, Community EGA nodes are individual institutions or initiatives with human genetic data intended to be shared with the research community. Key services available in the Federated EGA structure are: Central EGA Federated EGA node Community EGA nodes Data submission Offers international submissions service Offers submission service in a particular jurisdiction Does not offer an external submissions service Helpdesk support Provides external international helpdesk Provides helpdesk support for submitters in its jurisdiction and for approved users of data managed at its facilities Provides helpdesk support only for approved users of data managed at its facilities Data distribution Manages worldwide distribution for data hosted at Central EGA Manages worldwide distribution for data hosted at Federated EGA node Distribution for data hosted at Community EGA node EMBL-EBI and CRG have prepared a series of documents describing the overall governance and coordination framework. These describe the Federated EGA structure, the rights and responsibilities of the different parties and governing committees, and node operation guidelines. The federation governance proposal is under review by the first countries invited to join as Federated nodes, with further interested countries likely to join in the coming years. The Central EGA team has been working closely with many ELIXIR partners, including ELIXIR Finland, Luxembourg, Germany, Norway, Spain and Sweden.

  Blog the-federated-ega-network

• Gut metagenome from Estonian Microbiome Cohort

  Stool samples were collected from 2,509 Estonian Biobank participants. The shotgun metagenomic paired-end sequencing was performed by Novogene Bioinformatics Technology Co., Ltd. using the Illumina NovaSeq6000 platform, resulting in 4.62 ± 0.44 Gb of data per sample (insert size, 350 bp; read length, 2 × 250 bp). A total of 2,513 samples belonging to 2,509 individuals were sequenced, including 4 biological replicates from one individual. First, the reads were trimmed for quality and adapter sequences. The host reads that aligned to the human genome were removed using SOAP2.21 (parameters: -s 135 -l 30 -v 7 -m 200 -x 400).

  Dataset EGAD00001008448

• Institut Curie Neuroblastoma Whole Genome Sequencing Diagnosis Relapse

  Neuroblastoma, a clinically heterogeneous pediatric cancer, is characterized by distinct genomic profiles but few recurrent mutations. As neuroblastoma is expected to have high degree of genetic heterogeneity, study of neuroblastoma's clonal evolution with deep coverage whole-genome sequencing of diagnosis and relapse samples will lead to a better understanding of the molecular events associated with relapse. Samples were included in this study if sufficient DNA from constitutional, diagnosis and relapse tumors was available for WGS. Whole genome sequencing was performed on trios (constitutional, diagnose and relapse DNA) from eight patients using Illumina Hi-seq2500 leading to paired-ends (PE) 90x90 for 6 of them and 100x100 for two. Expected coverage for sample NB0175 100x100bp was 30X for tumor and constitutional samples. For the seven other patients expected coverage was 80X for tumor samples with PE 100x100, 100X in the other tumor samples and 50X for all constitutional samples (see table 1). Following alignment with BWA (Li et al., Oxford J, 2009 Jul) allowing up to 4% of mismatches, bam files were cleaned up according to the Genome Analysis Toolkit (GATK) recommendations (Van der Auwera et al., Current Protocols in Bioinformatics, 2013, picard-1.45, GenomeAnalysisTK-2.2-16). Variant calling was performed in parallel using 3 variant callers: GenomeAnalysisTK-2.2-16, Samtools-0.1.18 and MuTect-1.1.4 (McKenna et al., Genome Res, 2010; Li et al., Oxford J, 2009 Aug; Cibulskis et al., Nature, 2013). Annovar-v2012-10-23 with cosmic-v64 and dbsnp-v137 were used for the annotation and RefSeq for the structural annotation. For GATK and Samtools, single nucleotide variants (SNVs) with a quality under 30, a depth of coverage under 6 or with less than 2 reads supporting the variant were filter out. MuTect with parameters following GATK and Samtools thresholds have been used to filter our irrelevant variants. .SNVs within and around exons of coding genes overlapping splice sites.. Then,variants reported in more than 1% of the population in the 1000 genomes (1000gAprl_2012) or Exome Sequencing Project (ESP6500) have been discarded in order to filter polymorphisms. Finally, synonymous variants were filtered out. MuTect focuses on somatic by filtering with constitutional sample. Mpileup comparison between constitutional and somatic DNAs allowed us to focus also on tumor specific SNVs with GATK and Samtools. Finally, every SNV called by our pipeline and also supported in any constitutional samples were filtered our in order to prevent putative constitutional DNA coverage deficiency. Then we analyzed CNVs (copy number variants) with HMMcopy-v0.1.1 (Gavin et al., Genome Res, 2012) and control-FREEC-v6.7 (Boeva et al., Bioinformatics 2011) with a respective window of 2000bp and 1000 bp, and auto-correction of normal contamination of tumor samples for Control-FREEC. Finally we explored Structural variants (SVs) including deletions, inversions, tandem duplications and translocations using DELLY-v0.5.5 with standard parameters (Rausch et al., Oxford J, 2012). In tumors, at least 10 supporting reads were required to make a call and 5 supporting reads for the sample NB0175 with a coverage of only 40X (see table 2). To predict SVs in constitutional samples for subsequent somatic filtering, only 2 supporting reads were required in order not to miss one. To identify somatic events, all the SVs in each normal sample were first flanked by 500 bp in both directions and any SVs called in a tumor sample which was in the combined flanked regions of respective normal sample was removed (see graph 1). Deletions with more than 5 genes impacted or larger than 1Mb and inversions or tandem duplications covering more than 4 genes, were removed. We focused on exonic and splicing events for deletions, inversions, and tandem duplications. For translocation, we keep all SVs that occurred in intronic, exonic, 5'UTR, upstream or splicing regions. Bioinformatics detection of variations with Deep sequencing approach Once PE reads merged and adaptors trimmed by SeqPrep with default parameters, merged reads were aligned via the BWA (Li H. and Durbin R. 2009 PMID 19451168) allowing up to 1 differences in the 22-base-long seeds and reporting only unique alignments. Only reads having a mapping quality 20 or more have been further analysed. Variant calling software was not used, since we aimed to predict variations at low frequencies, observed in less than 1% of reads. Such variants require a custom approach. Using DepthOfCoverage functions of the Genome Analysis Toolkit (GATK) v2.13.2 (McKenna A, et al., 2010 Genome Research PMID: 20644199), we focused on high quality coverage of bases A, C, G and T at the targeted variant position. Depth of coverage of each base following a mapping quality higher than 20 and a base quality higher than 10 have been taken into account in order to focus only on high quality data. Aiming to determine the background level of variability at the studied regions, 10 control samples were included in the analysis. The same approach and filtering criteria have been applied as introduced above over the entire amplicons. In order to highlight variants, for each sample the frequencies of each bases at each amplicon position were then compared to those observed in the set of controls. Statistical analyses were performed with the R statistical software (http://www.R-project.org). Fisher’s exact two-sided tests with a Bonferroni correction were performed to compare percentages of bases between the data sets, i.e. for a given base between a case and the controls. Finally, significant variations were filtered-in once (i) a significant increase in the percentage of avariant base and (ii) a significant decrease in the percentage of it's reference base following our p.values criteria was observed (p.val < 0.05).

  Study EGAS00001001184

• BC Cancer, part of the Provincial Health Services Authority, Technology Development Office, Data Access Committee (PHSA TDO DAC)

  Access to data generated by BCCA is made available by completing the data access agreement for review by the data access committee and will be granted to qualified investigators for appropriate use.

  Dac EGAC00000000011

• Clonal dynamics after allogeneic haematopoietic cell transplantation using genome-wide somatic mutations - WGS

  Allogeneic haematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT) replaces the stem cells responsible for blood production with those harvested from a donor, and is received by 40,000 patients worldwide each year. To quantify dynamics of long-term stem cell engraftment, we sequenced whole genomes of 2,824 single-cell-derived haematopoietic colonies from blood samples of 10 donor-recipient pairs taken 9-31 years after HLA-matched sibling HCT. With younger donors, 10,000-50,000 stem cells had engrafted and were still contributing to haematopoiesis at time of sampling, but estimates were 10-fold lower with older donors. Engrafted stem cells made multilineage contributions to myeloid, B-lymphoid and T-lymphoid populations, although individual clones often showed biases towards one or other mature cell type. Recipients had lower clonal diversity than matched donors, equivalent to ~10-15 years of additional ageing, arising from up to 25-fold greater expansion of stem cell clones. An HCT-related population bottleneck alone could not explain these differences: instead, phylogenetic trees evinced two distinct modes of HCT-specific selection. In 'pruning selection', cell divisions underpinning recipient-enriched clonal expansions had occurred in the donor, preceding transplant - their selective advantage derived from preferential mobilisation, harvest, survival ex vivo or initial homing. In 'growth selection', cell divisions underpinning clonal expansion occurred through proliferative advantage in the recipient's marrow after homing - clones with multiple driver mutations especially demonstrated this pattern. Uprooting stem cells from their native environment and transplanting them to foreign soil exaggerates selective pressures, distorting and accelerating the loss of clonal diversity compared to the unperturbed haematopoiesis of donors.

  Dataset EGAD00001010872

• How upcycled prostate cancer sequences enabled key findings on telomeres length

  The length of telomeres, the chromosomes’ end tails, as depicted in the figure below, physiologically shorten with aging. This means that younger cells have longer telomeres compared to their aged counterparts; one could say that the length of cells’ telomeres is a measure of their replicative power. Cancer cells are known to be able to turn this into their favour, and expand their replicative immortality through telomere lengthening and maintenance. Despite being a well-studied pan-cancer hallmark, the relation of the telomeres length to specific cancer genomic features is poorly understood. Julia Livingstone and her colleagues from P.C. Boutros' team in Los Angeles focused their work on prostate cancer. To investigate the relations between telomere length and the clinico-genomics of prostate tumours, they used whole genome sequencing (WGS) of 392 published tumour–reference pairs previously deposited at the EGA under accession numbers EGAS00001000400 and EGAS00001000900. Their work was published on Nature Communications in November 2021. They determined the telomere length of the sequencing sample, from both tumour and non-tumour adjacent tissues, and subsequently ran statistical analysis to investigate possible correlation between the telomeres length with several cancer features. The team discovered that telomeres length does not correlate with any specific driver gene mutation, but it does with the overall frequency of single nucleotides variants in a sample. This finding suggests that tumours with shorter telomeres accumulate more mutations without strong selective pressures for specific ones. While proliferation rate did not correlate directly with telomere length, methylation of almost half of all genes strongly did. The team’s results are massive and reveal a complicated and fascinating relation of different clinical and genomic features of prostate cancer with telomere length. In the paper discussion, they smartly consider different possibilities. As noted above, all these amazing results have been obtained analysing previously sequenced samples. Remarkably, the researchers who generated the samples did not focus at all on telomeres length. They indeed studied specific genes mutations and the features of early and late-onset prostate cancer. This proves, once again, the power of sequencing data re-use. This data is tremendously rich in information, and can hardly be exhausted with any number of analyses. Generating sequencing data, especially Whole Genome Sequencing, even better if tumor-reference paired, is like shopping every last article at the grocery store. You can then cook several recipes, or prepare a seven-course dinner, and still have ingredients left for someone else to borrow and cook something you have not thought about, a recipe that is just not in your cookbook. Noteworthy, the data retrieved from the EGA for this paper is associated with rich and complete metadata, meaning pheno-clinical information regarding the sample donors. As Julia Livingstone and her team wrote, using rich clinical annotations enabled them to assess the relationship between telomere length and patients outcome. This highlights once again the importance of reporting and annotating metadata correctly; It might feel like extra work for the researchers depositing their data, but it really has a huge value. Our team at the EGA is currently working to improve the metadata annotation process, with the aim to maximize the benefits for the scientific community.

  Blog prostate-cancer-sequences-enabled-key-findings-on-telomeres-length