Project description:This is a pathogenic mutation profile of colorectal patients specifically in 5 genes, i.e. APC, TP53, PIK3CA, KRAS, and MLH1. Single nucleotide variants identified were synchronized with patients’ characteristics.
Project description:We identified pathogenic and likely pathogenic variants in 17.8% of the patients within a wide range of cancer types. In particular, mesothelioma, ovarian cancer, cervical cancer, urothelial cancer, and cancer of unknown primary origin displayed high frequencies of pathogenic variants. In total, 22 BRCA1 and BRCA2 germline variant were identified in 12 different cancer types, of which 10 (45%) variants were not previously identified in these patients. Pathogenic germline variants were predominantly found in DNA repair pathways; approximately half of the variants were within genes involved in homologous recombination repair. Loss of heterozygosity and somatic second hits were identified in several of these genes, supporting possible causality for cancer development. A potential treatment target based on pathogenic germline variant could be suggested in 25 patients (4%).
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.
Project description:Mutational inactivation of TP53 is a common event in cancer. Germline mutations in TP53 that inactivate this protein also occur in Li Fraumeni syndrome, which predisposes to early-onset cancer. In addition, there are dozens of other germline variants in TP53 that do not completely inactivate the function of this protein. In many cases studies have shown strong support for an impact of these lesser-functioning hypomorphs with increased cancer risk in humans and mouse models; however, the majority of these hypomorphs have yet to be categorized as pathogenic in clinical genetics databases. There is thus need for a functional assay to distinguish lesser-functioning hypomorphic p53 variants from wild type p53, or benign, fully-functional, variants. We report the surprising finding that two different African-centric genetic hypomorphs of p53, which occur in distinct functional domains of the protein, share common activities. We show that the Pro47Ser variant in the transactivation domain and the Tyr107His variant in the DNA binding domain both share increased propensity to misfold into a conformation specific for mutant p53. Moreover, cells and tissues with these variants show increased NF-B activity. We have identified a common gene signature from unstressed lymphocyte cell lines that is shared between these two, and other, genetic missense hypomorphs of TP53. We show that this gene signature successfully distinguishes wild type p53 and a benign p53 variant from lesser-functioning hypomorphic variants. These findings should allow us to better understand how hypomorphic variants contribute to cancer risk, and to better inform cancer risk in hypomorph carriers.
