The small bowel and colon are organs critical for maintaining homeostasis of the human body by mediating nutritional absorption upon the ingestion of food. Though both organs are extensive in length, there are known differences in function and cellular heterogeneity within different portions of each. Also, a cross section anywhere in the bowel reveals a complex layering of components involved in absorption and secretion, motility of gut contents, circulation, and immunity. We are mapping the complexity of the the small bowel and colon with cell-to-cell resolution in histologic sections, both along their lengths and across multiple individuals. Our molecular data consist of single cell ATAC-seq and RNA-seq. These profiles are spatially mapped to histologic sections using CO-Detection by indEXing (CODEX), a highly multiplexed system of antibody-tagged target epitopes.
We performed a genome-wide association study (GWAS) that utilized 8,180 atrial fibrillation cases and 28,612 controls and followed up in an additional 3,120 cases and 125,064 controls in the Japanese population. We replicated previously reported loci and identified six novel loci. Five of the six novel loci were specifically associated with atrial fibrillation in the Japanese population after comparing our data to individuals of European ancestry, suggesting there might be different susceptibility genetic factors across ancestries. Our study has discovered variants in genes HAND2, KCND3 and NEBL that are relevant to atrial fibrillation susceptibility. The involvement of PPFIA4 and SH3PXD2A in axon guidance also suggested its role in the disease pathogenesis. Our findings may contribute to a better understanding of atrial fibrillation susceptibility and pathogenesis.
The study was conducted under the auspices of the Transdisciplinary Research In Cancer of the Lung (TRICL) Research Team, which is a part of the Genetic Associations and MEchanisms in ONcology (GAME-ON) consortium, and associated with the International Lung Cancer Consortium (ILCCO). Ethics All participants provided written informed consent. All studies were reviewed and approved by institutional ethics review committees at the involved institutions. Sequencing data are derived from four sub-studies. The sub-studies that contributed include Harvard, Liverpool, Toronto, and IARC. The IARC and Toronto studies are described above. A description of the Harvard and Liverpool studies is provided below. Liverpool Lung Project: The Liverpool Lung Project (LLP)1 is a case control and cohort study, which has over 11,500 individuals, with detailed epidemiological, clinical and outcome data with associated specimens (i.e. tumour tissue, blood, plasma, sputum, bronchial lavage, EBUS and oral brushings). The participants have completed a detailed lifestyle questionnaire and updated data on clinical outcome and hospital events are collected through the Office of National Statistics, Cancer Registry and from Health Episode Statistics. The project is registered on the UK National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) lung cancer portfolio and has all the required ethical approvals and sponsorship arrangements in place. The LLP has detailed standard operating procedures (SOP) for all aspects of the recruitment, data, specimen collection as well as the data storage. The LLP Cohort study has 8,224 participants with blood and 7,761 with plasma samples. The LLP case-control samples have been incorporated into in a large number of international GWAS and molecular studies 2,3, methylation 4-7, microRNA 8and next generation studies 9-11, resulting in high ranking publications, as well as forming the basis for the LLP risk prediction model 12-14 which has been utilised in the UK lung cancer screening trial (UKLS) 15-17 Patient and control DNAs were derived from EDTA-venous blood samples. Harvard Samples. David Christiani at the Harvard University School of Public Health has been directing research studies to investigate etiological factors influencing lung cancer development since 1983 and has amassed a collection of 2000 controls and 5055 lung cancer cases. He has been actively collecting and storing snap frozen tumor samples since 1992. Around 1500 tumor samples have been collected and the average wet tumor yield is about 30 grams of tumor, of which 631 cases have completely annotated clinical and survival information. Pathology confirmation is provided by two pathologists. At the time of surgery, a minimum of 30 grams of wet lung tumor tissue and 30 grams of non-involved tissue from the same lobe is sectioned, flash frozen and sent to Dr. Christiani's lab for logging and storage. A blood sample for DNA and serum is collected. A structured interview by trained research staff is conducted on each case, and clinical outcomes and treatments is extracted and entered into the molecular epidemiology data base at Harvard. Fresh frozen samples have been collected from 1451 lung cancer and are available for study. Samples from this collaborative study have played key roles in major studies, including the initial finding describing EGFR mutations in lung cancer 22. Participants in this study are patients, > 18 years of age, with newly diagnosed histologically confirmed lung cancer. Samples that are included in the analysis have the following histologies: Adenocarcinoma: 8140/3, 8250/3, 8260/3, 8310/3, 8480/3 8560/3; LCC: 8012/3, 8031/3; squamous carcinoma: 8070/3, 8071/3, 8072/3, 8074/3; and other NSCLC: 8010/3, 8020/3, 8021/3, 8032/3, 8230/3. The Toronto Study: The Toronto study was conducted in the Great Toronto Area between 1997 and 2014. Cases were recruited at the hospitals in the network of University of Toronto and Lunenfeld- Tanenbaum Research Institute. At the time of recruitment in the clinical setting, provisional diagnoses of lung carcinoma were first assigned based on clinical criteria. Diagnoses for all cases included were histologically confirmed by the reference pathologist who is a specialist in pulmonary pathology, based on review of pathology reports from surgery, biopsy or cytology samples in 100% of cases. Diagnostic classification was done initially according to ICD-9, ICD-10, and ICD for oncology-2, and subsequently converted to ICD-O-3. Tumors were grouped into the major categories included in this analysis according to primary cancer type based on the ICD-3 definitions. Controls were randomly selected from individual visiting family medicine clinics and Ministry of Finance Municipal Tax Tapes. All subjects were interviewed using a standard questionnaire and information on lifestyle risk factors, occupational history, medical and family history was collected. Blood samples were collected from more than 85% of the subjects. IARC: The IARC data are derived from case-control studies conducted in Russia and include samples that have available tissue samples. Patient and control DNAs were derived from EDTA-venous blood samples. The lung cancer patients were classified according to ICD-O-3; SQ: 8070/3, 8071/3, 8072/3, 8074/3; AD: 8140/3, 8250/3, 8260/3, 8310/3, 8480/3, 8560/3, 8251/3, 8490/3, 8570/3, 8574/3; with tumous with overlapping histologies classified as mixed. The Lung Cancer Transdisciplinary Research Cohort is utilized in the following dbGaP sub-studies. To view genotypes, other molecular data, and derived variables collected in these sub-studies, please click on the following sub-studies below or in the "Sub-studies" section of this top-level study page phs000876 Lung Cancer Transdisciplinary Research Cohort. phs000877 Meta Analysis phs000878 CIDR Lung Cancer phs001681 Affy Axiom Array
Somatic mutations (burdens and signatures) and clonal dynamics in individuals with germline DNA polymerase mutations.
Comprehensive Whole Genome Sequencing and Whole Transcriptome (RNASeq) analyses from 114 pediatric patients at Memorial Sloan Kettering. This dataset was used as a prospective clinical utility and feasibility study. By using our Isabl infrastructure for precision medicine, we developed a 2-week end-to-end pipeline to analyze cfDNA, WGS and WTS, which we refer to as cWGTS.
The goal of this study is to deliver a detailed characterization of the patterns of disease dissemination at diagnosis, during progression and in response to therapy in high-risk neuroblastoma. Longitudinal and spatially distinct tumors were collected from patients. Clinical data includes diagnosis and treatment information. Biospecimen data includes whole genome sequencing (WGS) and whole transcriptome sequencing (WTS).
A large-scale retrospective study in metastatic breast cancer patients using circulating tumour DNA and machine learning to predict treatment outcome and progression-free survival from the paper "A large-scale retrospective study in metastatic breast cancer patients using circulating tumour DNA and machine learning to predict treatment outcome and progression-free survival", by Beddowes et al. Mol.Onc.
A GeoMx spatial transcriptomic study using 7 patients from the ICARUS LUNG01 trial focusing on tumour and immune cell compartments. We selected 7 paired baseline and on-treatment patient samples for analysis. We selected up to 4 regions of interest (ROI) per sample tissue. We identified tumour and immune cell areas of illumination (AOI) using CK and CD45 antibodies respectively
Terminal erythroid differentiation cells(GYPA+ cells) were isolated from neonate cord blood(CB) and adult bowe marrow(BM). single cell transcriptome sequencing library was constructed by 10X genomics system and sequenced by Illumina X ten platform. Sequencing data was analyzed to profile dynamic expression genes and centre regulators during terminal erythroid differentiation stage within CB and BM.
Despite their deleterious effects, small insertions and deletions (indels) have received far less attention than substitutions. Here we generated isogenic CRISPR-edited human cellular models of post-replicative repair dysfunction (PRRd), including individual and combined gene-edits of mismatch repair (MMR) and replicative polymerases (POLE and POLD1), enabling the study of mutational processes driving indel formation.