Project description:Background: Meningiomas account for about 27% of primary brain tumors, making them one of the most common brain tumor. They are most common in people between the ages of 40 and 70 and are more common in women than in men. Most meningiomas (90%) are categorized as benign tumors, with the remaining 10% being atypical or malignant. Multiple classifications exist today, but the most commonly used is the World Health Organization’s (WHO) which classifies meningiomas into three histological grades: grade I (benign), grade II (atypical), and grade III (anaplastic) in accordance with the clinical prognosis. Most of these subtypes behave similarly, however anaplastics are the most aggressive. The ability to distinguish benign from atypical and anaplastic tumors is important because of its impact on treatment decisions. A molecular based classification system has the likelihood of being a better prognostic indicator and is useful for identifying alterations in pathways and networks that drive tumor progression and growth. The information obtained can potentially be translated into more effective and less toxic targeted therapies. We tested a method for genome wide expression profiling of formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded tissues. We applied the method to the analysis of the clinical outcome of meningioma tumor. Materials and Methods: The training set consisted of tissue samples from 63 patients who were consecutively treated with surgery for meningioma between 1990 and 2005. For each patient data on clinical outcomes and formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded blocks of tumor were available. The validation set included tissue samples from 189 patients with meningioma who consecutively underwent surgery between 1992 and 2006. We used a custom 60-mer amino modified oligo- array, containing 912 probes, a lot of which specific for genes commonly altered in cancer. Functional annotation was performed by means of gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA, www. broad.mit.edu/gsea/). Survival analyses were performed with the use of the log-rank test and Cox regression modeling. All analyses were performed with the use of GenePattern. Results: We investigated whether gene-expression profiles of meningioma tumors were associated with the clinical outcome. Using a standard leaveone- out cross-validation procedure, we found the meningioma signature to be significantly correlated with survival (P = 0.0001). The survival correlated signature contained 219 genes and was tested in the validation set. Conclusion: These results support the validity of the survival signature and highlight the potential role of tumoral meningioma tissue in predicting the outcome for patients with meningioma tumors.
Project description:Background: Meningiomas account for about 27% of primary brain tumors, making them one of the most common brain tumor. They are most common in people between the ages of 40 and 70 and are more common in women than in men. Most meningiomas (90%) are categorized as benign tumors, with the remaining 10% being atypical or malignant. Multiple classifications exist today, but the most commonly used is the World Health Organization’s (WHO) which classifies meningiomas into three histological grades: grade I (benign), grade II (atypical), and grade III (anaplastic) in accordance with the clinical prognosis. Most of these subtypes behave similarly, however anaplastics are the most aggressive. The ability to distinguish benign from atypical and anaplastic tumors is important because of its impact on treatment decisions. A molecular based classification system has the likelihood of being a better prognostic indicator and is useful for identifying alterations in pathways and networks that drive tumor progression and growth. The information obtained can potentially be translated into more effective and less toxic targeted therapies. We tested a method for genome wide expression profiling of formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded tissues. We applied the method to the analysis of the clinical outcome of meningioma tumor. Materials and Methods: The training set consisted of tissue samples from 63 patients who were consecutively treated with surgery for meningioma between 1990 and 2005. For each patient data on clinical outcomes and formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded blocks of tumor were available. The validation set included tissue samples from 189 patients with meningioma who consecutively underwent surgery between 1992 and 2006. We used a custom 60-mer amino modified oligo- array, containing 912 probes, a lot of which specific for genes commonly altered in cancer. Functional annotation was performed by means of gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA, www. broad.mit.edu/gsea/). Survival analyses were performed with the use of the log-rank test and Cox regression modeling. All analyses were performed with the use of GenePattern. Results: We investigated whether gene-expression profiles of meningioma tumors were associated with the clinical outcome. Using a standard leaveone- out cross-validation procedure, we found the meningioma signature to be significantly correlated with survival (P = 0.0001). The survival correlated signature contained 219 genes and was tested in the validation set. Conclusion: These results support the validity of the survival signature and highlight the potential role of tumoral meningioma tissue in predicting the outcome for patients with meningioma tumors.
Project description:We have sequenced miRNA libraries from human embryonic, neural and foetal mesenchymal stem cells. We report that the majority of miRNA genes encode mature isomers that vary in size by one or more bases at the 3’ and/or 5’ end of the miRNA. Northern blotting for individual miRNAs showed that the proportions of isomiRs expressed by a single miRNA gene often differ between cell and tissue types. IsomiRs were readily co-immunoprecipitated with Argonaute proteins in vivo and were active in luciferase assays, indicating that they are functional. Bioinformatics analysis predicts substantial differences in targeting between miRNAs with minor 5’ differences and in support of this we report that a 5’ isomiR-9-1 gained the ability to inhibit the expression of DNMT3B and NCAM2 but lost the ability to inhibit CDH1 in vitro. This result was confirmed by the use of isomiR-specific sponges. Our analysis of the miRGator database indicates that a small percentage of human miRNA genes express isomiRs as the dominant transcript in certain cell types and analysis of miRBase shows that 5’ isomiRs have replaced canonical miRNAs many times during evolution. This strongly indicates that isomiRs are of functional importance and have contributed to the evolution of miRNA genes
Project description:Gene expression profiling of immortalized human mesenchymal stem cells with hTERT/E6/E7 transfected MSCs. hTERT may change gene expression in MSCs. Goal was to determine the gene expressions of immortalized MSCs.