Project description:Genome-wide DNA methylation profiling of 4 gliomas with EWSR1-BEND fusions with histologic features resembling astroblastoma. The Illumina Infinium EPIC 850k Human DNA Methylation Beadchip was used to obtain DNA methylation profiles across approximately 850,000 CpG sites of genomic DNA extracted from formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded tumor tissue of 4 gliomas with EWSR1-BEND2 fusions.
Project description:Sarcoma is a rare form of tumor characterized by the presence of oncogenic fusion, that is often the only aberration identified. U133A Affymetrix arrays were used to identify the expression signature of 3 different types of sarcoma: AFH, CCS and GI-CCS harboring the EWSR1-CREB1 and EWSR1-ATF1 chromosomal translocation.
Project description:Linking clinical multi-omics analyses with mechanistic studies may improve the understanding of rare cancers. We leveraged two precision oncology programs to investigate rhabdomyosarcoma with FUS/EWSR1-TFCP2 fusions, an orphan malignancy without effective therapies. All tumors exhibited outlier ALK expression, partly accompanied by intragenic deletions and aberrant splicing. This resulted in the expression of ALK variants, i.e. short transcripts (ST), which we named ALK-ST1 (consisting of exons 1-2:18–29), ALK-ST2 (1:18–29), ALK-ST3 (18–29), and ALK-ST4 (1–5:12–17). To systematically investigate the oncogenic capacity of these ALK variants, we stably expressed them in p53-deficient MCF10A human mammary epithelial cells and performed different transformation assays. These experiments demonstrated that ALK-ST1, ALK-ST2, and ALK-ST3 are oncogenic variants, while ALK-ST4 could not transform MCF10A cells. We confirmed protein expression of ALK-ST1, ALK-ST2, and ALK-ST3 by western blotting, which was not possible for ALK-ST4 due to lack of a specific antibody that binds to the N-terminus of ALK that is lost in ALK-ST4. We therefore performed mass spectrometry-based label-free quantitative proteomics on lysates from MCF10A cells stably expressing empty vector (EV), wildtype ALK (ALK-WT), or ALK-ST4 to confirm its expression.