Methylated DNA immunoprecipitation sequencing of 28 untreated prostate cancers, 11 castration resistant prostate cancers, and 12 benign prostatic hyperplasias.
It is the ambition of the team formed by members of the Netherlands Cancer Institute (NKI) and the Cancer Genome Project at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute (WTSI) to unravel the genomic and phenotypic complexity of human cancers in order to identify optimal drug combinations for personalized cancer therapy. Our integrated approach will entail (i) deep sequencing of human tumours and cognate mouse tumours; (ii) drug screens in a 1000+ fully characterized tumour cell line panel; (iii) high-throughput in vitro and in vivo shRNA and cDNA drug resistance and enhancement screens; (iv) computational analysis of the acquired data, leading to significant response predictions; (v) rigorous validation of these predictions in genetically engineered mouse models and patient-derived xenografts. This integrated effort is expected to yield a number of combination therapies and companion-diagnostics biomarkers that will be further explored in our existing clinical trial networks.
Genotyping by array and Transcriptome profiling by high-throughput sequencing
A selection of human cancers harbours somatic driver mutations in genes encoding histones, most notably childhood brain tumours with K27M substitutions of the histone 3.3 gene, H3F3A. We performed whole genome sequencing of the benign cartilage tumour, chondroblastoma, and targeted sequencing of histone 3.3 genes, H3F3A and H3F3B, in seven further skeletal tumour types. We identified an exceptionally high prevalence of novel histone 3.3 driver mutations at glycine 34 and at lysine 36. Histone 3.3 gene mutations were found in 91% in giant cell tumours of bone (48/53), mainly H3F3A G34W variants, and in 92% of chondroblastoma (73/79), predominantly K36M mutations in H3F3B. H3F3B is paralogous to the cancer gene H3F3A. However, H3F3B driver variants have not previously been reported in human cancer. Our observation demonstrate remarkable tumour-specificity of mutations, with respect to which histone 3.3 gene and residue is mutated, indicating that the advantage these mutations confer is tumour dependent. Moreover, tumour-specific mutation of H3F3A and H3F3B suggests, that although both genes encode identical proteins, they are likely non-redundant and employed differentially during skeletal development.
