Chromosomal copy number heterogeneity predicts survival rates across cancers
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ABSTRACT: Survival rates of cancer patients vary widely within and between malignancies. While genetic aberrations are at the root of all cancers, individual genomic features cannot explain these distinct disease outcomes. In contrast, intra-tumour heterogeneity (ITH) has the potential to elucidate pan-cancer survival rates and the biology that drives cancer prognosis1,2. Unfortunately, a comprehensive and effective framework to measure ITH across cancers is missing3. Here, we introduce a scalable measure of chromosomal copy number heterogeneity that predicts patient survival across cancers. We show that the level of ITH can be derived from a single-sample copy number profile. Using gene-expression data we demonstrate that ongoing chromosomal instability underlies the observed heterogeneity. Analysing 11,534 primary cancer samples from 35 different malignancies, we find that copy number heterogeneity can be accurately deduced and predicts cancer survival across tissues of origin and stages of disease. Our results provide a unifying molecular explanation for the different survival rates observed between cancer types.
Project description:Copy number analyses of regionally separated intratumoral biopsies of prostate cancers. Intratumoral heterogeneity (ITH) leads to regional biases of the mutational landscape in a single tumor and may influence the single biopsy-based clinical diagnosis and treatment decision. To evaluate the extent of ITH in unifocal prostate cancers (PCAs) that had not been sought, we analyzed multiple regional biopsies from three PCAs using DNA copy number analyses. DNA copy number showed ITH including regional biases in the presentation of a well-known driver of TMPRSS2-ERG fusion. Our analyses identified a substantial level of genetic ITH in unifocal PCAs at the genomic levels, which should be taken into account for the curation of biomarkers in the clinical setting.
Project description:Copy number analyses of regionally separated intratumoral biopsies of prostate cancers. Intratumoral heterogeneity (ITH) leads to regional biases of the mutational landscape in a single tumor and may influence the single biopsy-based clinical diagnosis and treatment decision. To evaluate the extent of ITH in unifocal prostate cancers (PCAs) that had not been sought, we analyzed multiple regional biopsies from three PCAs using DNA copy number analyses. DNA copy number showed ITH including regional biases in the presentation of a well-known driver of TMPRSS2-ERG fusion. Our analyses identified a substantial level of genetic ITH in unifocal PCAs at the genomic levels, which should be taken into account for the curation of biomarkers in the clinical setting. Four intratumoral biopsies were obtained per tumor for three prostate cancers. Radical prostatectomy tissue from three patients with prostate cancers were obtained. Board-certified pathologists reviewed the hematoxylin&eosin stained sections and identified tumor-rich regions (> 80% purity). We selected four different areas for biopsy that were at least 5mm apart and were comprised of the most common Gleason pattern (the most common histologic patterns with minimal histologic differences). Copy number profiling was performed using Agilent 180K platform according to the manufacturer's protocol.
Project description:Intra-tumour heterogeneity (ITH) foster tumour adaptation and hamper the efficiency of personalised medicine approaches. We investigated the extent of ITH within individual clear cell renal cell carcinomas (ccRCC) by multi-region sampling and copy number analysis. We analyzed 63 tumour regions and 8 normal samples from eight clear cell renal cell carcinomas using Affymetrix SNP6 arrays. All individual tumours were subjected to multi-region sampling and copy-number analysis using Affymetrix SNP6 arrays.
Project description:Esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) is among the most common malignancies, but little is known about the spatial intratumor heterogeneity (ITH) and the temporal clonal evolutionary processes in this cancer. Interestingly, the epigenetic profiling also showed strong evidence of spatial ITH, and the phyloepigenetic trees were extremely similar with the phylogenetic ones, indicating the interplay and co-dependency of genetic and epigenetic alterations in ESCC. We found that several genes were both mutated and hypermethylated at their promoters, such as ASXL1 and EPHA7. Our integrated investigations of the spatial ITH and the temporal clonal evolution might provide insights into developing biomarkers for early diagnosis of ESCC, as well as personalized therapeutic targets for treating this malignancy. DNA methylation profiles of 12 tumor regions and 2 matched normal esophageal epithelial tissues from three M-WES-examined ESCC cases (ESCC01, ESCC03 and ESCC05) were performed using Illumina Infinium HumanMethylation450K platform (Illumina, San Diego, CA) at the Epigenome Center of University of Southern California.
Project description:Gastro-esophageal adenocarcinomas (GEAs) are aggressive cancers and multiple trials of targeted therapies recently failed to improve survival in these tumors. Intratumor heterogeneity (ITH) is suspected to contribute to poor outcomes. Here we investigate the degree of ITH in multiple primary and metastatic regions of gastric adenocarcinoma tumours. ITH increased significantly with lymph node metastasis formation and subclonal aberrations activating the Mitogen Activated Protein Kinase (MAPK)-pathway were significantly enriched in nodal metastases. This shows that selection pressures in the lymph node ecosystem differ from those in the primary tumor, leading to evolutionary convergence of distinct tumors when they spread to lymph nodes.
Project description:Intra-individual tumoral heterogeneity (ITH) is a hallmark of solid tumors and impedes accurate genomic diagnosis and selection of proper therapy. The purpose of this study was to identify ITH of ovarian serous adenocarcinomas (OSAs) and to determine the utility of ascitic cancer cells as a resource for mutation profiling in spite of ITH. We performed whole-exome sequencing, copy number profiling, and DNA methylation profiling of four OSA genomes using multiregional biopsies from 13 intraovarian lesions, 12 extraovarian tumor lesions (omentum/peritoneum), and ascitic cells. We observed substantial levels of heterogeneity in mutations and copy number alterations (CNAs) of the OSAs. We categorized the mutations into 'common', 'shared' and 'private' according to the regional distribution. Six common, 8 shared, and 24 private mutations were observed in known cancer-related genes,. but common mutations had a higher mutant allele frequency and included TP53 mutations in all four OSAs. Region-specific chromosomal amplifications and deletions involving BRCA1, PIK3CA, and RB1 were also identified. Of note, the mutations detected in ascitic cancer cells represented 92.3-100% of overall somatic mutations in the given case. Phylogenetic analyses of ascitic genomes predicted a polyseeding origin of somatic mutations in ascitic cells. Our results demonstrate that despite ITH, somatic mutations, CNAs, and DNA methylations in both â??commonâ?? category and cancer-related genes were highly conserved in ascitic cells of OSAs, highlighting the clinical relevance of genome analysis of ascitic cells. Ascitic tumor cells may serve as a potential resource to discover somatic mutations of primary OSA with diagnostic and therapeutic relevance. Genome wide DNA methylation profiling of ascitic cells as well as biopsies from ovarian serous adenocarcinomas cases obtained by Illumina Infinium 450k Human DNA methylation Beadchip Bisulphite converted DNA from the 16 samples were hybridized to the Illumina Infinium 450k Human Methylation Beadchip
Project description:Intra-individual tumoral heterogeneity (ITH) is a hallmark of solid tumors and impedes accurate genomic diagnosis and selection of proper therapy. The purpose of this study was to identify ITH of ovarian serous adenocarcinomas (OSAs) and to determine the utility of ascitic cancer cells as a resource for mutation profiling in spite of ITH. We performed whole-exome sequencing, copy number profiling, and DNA methylation profiling of four OSA genomes using multiregional biopsies from 13 intraovarian lesions, 12 extraovarian tumor lesions (omentum/peritoneum), and ascitic cells. We observed substantial levels of heterogeneity in mutations and copy number alterations (CNAs) of the OSAs. We categorized the mutations into 'common', 'shared' and 'private' according to the regional distribution. Six common, 8 shared, and 24 private mutations were observed in known cancer-related genes,. but common mutations had a higher mutant allele frequency and included TP53 mutations in all four OSAs. Region-specific chromosomal amplifications and deletions involving BRCA1, PIK3CA, and RB1 were also identified. Of note, the mutations detected in ascitic cancer cells represented 92.3-100% of overall somatic mutations in the given case. Phylogenetic analyses of ascitic genomes predicted a polyseeding origin of somatic mutations in ascitic cells. Our results demonstrate that despite ITH, somatic mutations, CNAs, and DNA methylations in both âcommonâ category and cancer-related genes were highly conserved in ascitic cells of OSAs, highlighting the clinical relevance of genome analysis of ascitic cells. Ascitic tumor cells may serve as a potential resource to discover somatic mutations of primary OSA with diagnostic and therapeutic relevance. The purpose of this study was to identify intra-individual tumor heterogenety of ovarian serous adenocarcinomas Four to nine different ovarian cancer areas from intraovarian and extra-ovarian lesions that were at least 1cm apart as well as 50 ml ascites were collected from the four OSA patients. Genomic DNA from tumor and matched normal samples were simultaneously hybridized onto the array. Total 29 array experiments were conducted.
Project description:Esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) is among the most common malignancies, but little is known about the spatial intratumor heterogeneity (ITH) and the temporal clonal evolutionary processes in this cancer. Interestingly, the epigenetic profiling also showed strong evidence of spatial ITH, and the phyloepigenetic trees were extremely similar with the phylogenetic ones, indicating the interplay and co-dependency of genetic and epigenetic alterations in ESCC. We found that several genes were both mutated and hypermethylated at their promoters, such as ASXL1 and EPHA7. Our integrated investigations of the spatial ITH and the temporal clonal evolution might provide insights into developing biomarkers for early diagnosis of ESCC, as well as personalized therapeutic targets for treating this malignancy.
Project description:Intra-tumour heterogeneity (ITH) foster tumour adaptation and hamper the efficiency of personalised medicine approaches. We investigated the extent of ITH within individual clear cell renal cell carcinomas (ccRCC) by multi-region sampling and copy number analysis. We analyzed 63 tumour regions and 8 normal samples from eight clear cell renal cell carcinomas using Affymetrix SNP6 arrays.
Project description:The aim of this study was to examine the effect of intra-tumor heterogeneity (ITH) on detection of genes within gene expression panels (GEPs), and the subsequent ability to predict prognostic risk. Multiplexed barcoded RNA analysis was used to measure the expression of 141 genes from five GEPs (Oncotype Dx, MammaPrint, PAM50, EndoPredict, and BCI) in breast cancer tissue sections and tumor-rich cores from 71 ER positive node-negative tumors. Tumor regions with high Ki67 and/or low PR were also used to punch cores, potentially representing aggressive areas of a tumor. In addition to examining the effect of ITH on measurement of GEPs, the effect of ITH on prediction of prognosis in the Oncotype Dx assay was also assessed.