Project description:Endometrial cancer (EC) is the most common female genital malignancy and the fourth most common cancer in women in the developing world1. EC has been traditionally classified into two main groups with different clinical, pathological and molecular features2,3. Type I or endometrioid endometrial carcinomas (EECs) account for about 75% of the cases and are typically estrogen-related and low-grade tumors with good prognosis that coexist or are preceded by endometrial hyperplasia, mainly diagnosed in perimenopausal women. In contrast, type II or non-endometrioid endometrial carcinomas (NEECs) are high-grade aggressive tumors associated with endometrial atrophy and poor prognosis, unrelated to estrogen and diagnosed in older women. These comprise several histological subtypes, being the most common the serous carcinomas (SEC)4. In recent years numerous large-scale studies of primary endometrioid and serous tumors have been performed5, revealing new mutated genes and establishing a new molecular subclassification based on the results obtained by The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) consortium6, which implies different clinical outcomes. More recently, the genomic evolution of EC has been analyzed through a comparative study of samples from endometrial atypical hyperplasia, primary tumors and paired metastases7, revealing the presence of intratumor heterogeneity as previously described in primary EC and other tumor types8,9. However an in-depth study considering multiple regions from primary tumor and paired metastases has not been performed up to now to our knowledge. Here we analyze by whole-exome sequencing (WES), massive parallel targeted sequencing and array comparative genomic hybridization (aCGH) the clonal evolution and intratumor heterogeneity of 7 endometrioid and 3 serous metastatic endometrial carcinomas. Different locations from the primary tumor as well as from their paired metastases were included in the study, allowing the reconstruction of the spatial and temporal phylogenetic evolution of the tumor. Different phylogenetic evolution patterns were identified, independently of the classical histological or molecular classification of the tumor, although similar patterns were found in ovarian metastasis and recurrent disease.
Project description:Uterine serous carcinoma (USC), an aggressive variant of endometrial cancer representing approximately 10% of endometrial cancer diagnoses, accounts for ~39% of endometrial cancer-related deaths. We examined the role of genomic alterations in advanced-stage USC associated with outcome using paired primary-metastatic tumors (n=29) treated with adjuvant platinum and taxane chemotherapy. Comparative genomic analysis of paired primary-metastatic patient tumors included whole exome sequencing and targeted gene expression. Both PLK3 amplification and the tumor immune microenvironment (TIME) in metastatic tumors were linked to time-to-recurrence (TTR) risk without any such association observed with primary tumors. TP53 loss was significantly more frequent in metastatic tumors of platinum-resistant versus platinum-sensitive patient and was also associated with increased TTR and mortality risk. Increased levels of chr1 breakpoints in USC metastatic versus primary tumors co-occur with PLK3 amplification. PLK3 and the TIME are potential targets for improving outcomes in USC adjuvant therapy.
Project description:Biological implications of healthy- and tumor-specific ERα cistromes in endometrial tumors have largely been understudied. Moreover, the functional impact of non-coding somatic variants has commonly been underexplored and remained elusive. This study is aimed to provide functional interpretation of non-coding somatic variants associated with tumor-specific ERα cistrome. Integrating the ChIP-seq analyses with the whole genome sequencing from the set of metastatic endometrial tumors and matched controls we observed that tumor-specific ERα cistrome is enriched for somatic variants. Additionally, H3K27Ac Hi-ChIP in cancer cell lines identified potential target genes of tumor-specific enhancers and coincident variants. We aim to employ CRISPR to identify tumor-specific ERα enhancers and target genes critical for estrogen-driven proliferation of endometrial cancer-cell lines. Through multidimensional omics data integration, our study is specifically geared to shed new lights on the molecular mechanisms of endometrial cancer development and progression and the functional impact of non-coding somatic mutations.
Project description:<p>The purpose of the original study was to search for somatic mutations in the tyrosine kinome of serous and clear cell endometrial carcinomas (human). The study was conducted in two phases.</p> <p>Phase 1: A mutation discovery screen, in which ~577 exons encoding the catalytic domains of 86 tyrosine kinases were PCR-amplified and bidirectionally Sanger sequenced from 24 serous, 11 clear cell, and 5 mixed histology endometrial tumors. This was followed by alignment of sequence reads to the human reference sequence and subsequent nucleotide variant calling to identify potential somatic (tumor-specific) mutations. Potential somatic mutations were confirmed by re-amplification and sequencing of the relevant tumor DNA as well as matched non-tumor ("normal") DNA from the same case.</p> <p>Phase 2: A mutation prevalence screen, in which the non-catalytic regions two tyrosine kinase genes, TNK2 and DDR1, were PCR-amplified and sequenced from the 40 discovery screen tumors, and all coding exons of TNK2 and DDR1 were PCR-amplified and sequenced from another 10 clear cell, 21 serous, and 41 endometrioid endometrial tumors, in an effort to identify additional somatic mutations in each gene. Exons encoding the exonuclease domain of POLE were also sequenced to document somatic mutations.</p>
Project description:<p>Endometrial cancer (EC) is the most commonly diagnosed gynecologic malignancy in the United States and is the sixth leading cause of cancer death amongst American women. The purpose of this study was to identify somatic (tumor-specific) copy number alterations in 7 clear cell ECs, 31 serous ECs, 17 endometrioid ECs, and the clear cell components of 2 endometrioid/clear cell ECs. To this end, DNAs from de-identified primary endometrial tumors and matched non-tumor tissues or blood were hybridized to high-density Illumina Infinium HumanHap650Y Beadchips or to high-density Human660W-Quad Beadchips and the data analyzed to annotate somatic copy number alterations throughout the genome.</p>
Project description:Genome wide DNA methylation profiling of Rhabdoid tumor of the kidney, Clear cell sarcoma of the kidney, Ewing's sarcoma family of tumors and non-neoplastic kidney. The Illumina Infinium HumanMethylation 27 BeadChip was used to obtain DNA methylation profiles across approximately 27000 CpGs . Samples included 3 Rhabdoid tumor of the kidney, 3 Clear cell sarcoma of the kidney, 3 Ewing's sarcoma family of tumor and 3 non-neoplastic kidney.