<p>Canine primary lung cancer cell line sensitivity to lapatinib. Four canine cell lines (three HER2WT and one HER2V659E) were treated with 14 lapatinib doses ranging from 100 μM to 5.5x10-2 nM for 72 hours with CellTiterGlo viability endpoints were measured and shown as percent survival relative to DMSO vehicle control.</p>
<div>Abstract<p>Small cell carcinoma of the ovary, hypercalcemic type (SCCOHT) is a rare but extremely lethal malignancy that mainly impacts young women. SCCOHT is characterized by a diploid genome with loss of SMARCA4 and lack of SMARCA2 expression, two mutually exclusive ATPases of the SWI/SNF chromatin-remodeling complex. We and others have identified the histone methyltransferase EZH2 as a promising therapeutic target for SCCOHT, suggesting that SCCOHT cells depend on the alternation of epigenetic pathways for survival. In this study, we found that SCCOHT cells were more sensitive to pan-HDAC inhibitors compared with other ovarian cancer lines or immortalized cell lines tested. Pan-HDAC inhibitors, such as quisinostat, reversed the expression of a group of proteins that were deregulated in SCCOHT cells due to SMARCA4 loss, leading to growth arrest, apoptosis, and differentiation <i>in vitro</i> and suppressed tumor growth of xenografted tumors of SCCOHT cells. Moreover, combined treatment of HDAC inhibitors and EZH2 inhibitors at sublethal doses synergistically induced histone H3K27 acetylation and target gene expression, leading to rapid induction of apoptosis and growth suppression of SCCOHT cells and xenografted tumors. Therefore, our preclinical study highlighted the therapeutic potential of combined treatment of HDAC inhibitors with EZH2 catalytic inhibitors to treat SCCOHT.</p></div>
<p>Somatic copy number plots derived from exome sequencing of five primary canine pulmonary adenocarcinomas (cPAC) and matched constitutional DNA. Tumor copy number states determined by tCoNutT analysis of tumors and matched constitutional DNA from five cPAC cases is shown with each canine chromosome plotted on the x-axis (shown in alternating green and black) and log2 fold change shown on the y-axis.</p>
<p>Canine primary lung cancer cell line sensitivity to erlotinib. Five canine cell lines (three HER2WT and two HER2V659E) and one human cell line BT474 (HER2amp) were treated with 10 erlotinib doses ranging from 5x10-8 to 50 μM for 72 hours with CellTiterGlo viability endpoints measured and shown as percent growth inhibition relative to DMSO vehicle control.</p>
<p>HER2 cellular location and function in primary canine lung cancer. (A) Canine papillary adenocarcinoma with intense, complete, circumferential membrane (white arrow) and lateral cytoplasmic membrane (black arrow) anti-HER2 antibody positive staining (brown) in a patient with wild-type HER2. (B) Canine papillary adenocarcinoma with moderate cytoplasmic (black arrow) anti-HER2 antibody positive staining (light brown) in a patient with wild-type HER2. x 40; bar 50 µm. (C) Anti-HER2 immunohistochemistry of a Grade 1 canine papillary adenocarcinoma wild type for HER2. x 20. (D) Segmentation mark-up of the tumor from adjacent normal lung. Tumor is identified by green, whereas red is area within tumor that contains no tissue, and yellow represents areas of non-tumor such as necrosis or tumor stroma. x20.</p>
Abstract BACKGROUND A subset of triple-negative breast cancers (TNBCs) have homologous recombination deficiency with upregulation of compensatory DNA repair pathways. PIKTOR, a combination of TAK-228 (TORC1/2 inhibitor) and TAK-117 (PI3Kα inhibitor), is hypothesized to increase genomic instability and increase DNA damage repair (DDR) deficiency, leading to increased sensitivity to DNA-damaging chemotherapy and to immune checkpoint blockade inhibitors. METHODS 10 metastatic TNBC patients received 4mg TAK-228 and 200mg TAK-117 (PIKTOR) orally each day for 3 days followed by 4 days off, weekly, until disease progression (PD), followed by intravenous cisplatin 75 mg/m 2 plus nab paclitaxel 220 mg/m 2 every 3 weeks for up to 6 cycles. Patients received subsequent treatment with pembrolizumab and/or chemotherapy. Primary endpoints were objective response rate with cisplatin/nab paclitaxel and safety. Biopsies of a metastatic lesion were collected prior to and at PD on PIKTOR. Whole exome and RNA-sequencing and reverse phase protein arrays (RPPA) were used to phenotype tumors pre- and post-PIKTOR for alterations in DDR, proliferation, and immune response. RESULTS With cisplatin/nab paclitaxel (cis/nab pac) therapy post PIKTOR, 3 patients had clinical benefit (1 partial response (PR) and 2 stable disease (SD) ≥ 6 months) and continued to have durable benefit in progression-free survival with pembrolizumab post-cis/nab pac for 1.2, 2, and 3.6 years. Their post-PIKTOR metastatic tissue displayed decreased mismatch repair (MMR), increased tumor mutation burden, and significantly lower levels of 53BP1, DAG Lipase β, GCN2, AKT Ser473, and PKCzeta Thr410/403 compared to pre-PIKTOR tumor tissue. CONCLUSIONS Priming patients’ chemotherapy-pretreated metastatic TNBC with PIKTOR led to very prolonged response/disease control with subsequent cis/nab pac, followed by pembrolizumab, in 3 of 10 treated patients. Our multi-omics approach revealed a higher number of genomic alterations, reductions in MMR, and alterations in immune and stress response pathways post-PIKTOR in patients who had durable responses. TRIAL REGISTRATION This clinical trial was registered on June 21, 2017, at ClinicalTrials.gov using identifier NCT03193853.
Abstract Small Cell Carcinoma of the Ovary Hypercalcemic Type (SCCOHT) is a rare and highly aggressive malignancy that affects children and young women at a mean age of 24 (range 14 months - 58 years). SCCOHT is refractory to standard of care therapy for ovarian cancer, with ∼75% mortality within 18 months of diagnosis. The early age of onset of SCCOHT and reports of familial occurrence in some cases, strongly suggest an underlying hereditary etiology. To understand the molecular pathogenesis of SCCOHT, we performed next-generation genomic sequencing on a series of tumor and germline samples from SCCOHT patients. This analysis revealed germline and somatic inactivating mutations in SMARCA4, a subunit of the SWI/SNF chromatin-remodeling complex, in 75% (9/12) of SCCOHT patients. Moreover, immunohistochemical (IHC) analysis of 15 tumors revealed that 87% (13/15) of tumors lacked SMARCA4 protein. The high prevalence of SMARCA4 mutations in SCCOHT has not been previously reported in other, more common ovarian carcinomas. We therefore examined the expression of SMARCA4 protein in 300 ovarian carcinomas of different histologies by IHC and found SMARCA4 protein loss in only 6 tumors. In addition, the BIN-67 SCCOHT cell line, which harbors 2 splice site mutations in SMARCA4, showed complete absence of SMARCA4 protein by Western blot while representative cell lines from 4 other ovarian carcinoma subtypes as well as immortalized granulosa cells (SVOG) and adult granulosa tumor cells (KGN) all maintained SMARCA4 expression. The prevalence of germline and sporadic SMARCA4 mutations as well as frequent SMARCA4 protein loss in SCCOHTs implicates this gene as a tumor suppressor in this cancer and more broadly suggests a role for the SWI/SNF complex in its pathogenesis. In addition to providing evidence to the pathogenesis of SCCOHT, this finding provides the opportunity to develop treatment approaches for SCCOHT based on targeting vulnerabilities of SMARCA4-deficient cells. Citation Format: Pilar Ramos, Anthony Karnezis, David Craig, Aleksandar Sekulic, Megan Russell, William Hendricks, Michael Barrett, Karey Shumansky, Yidong Yang, Sohrab Shah, Leah Prentice, Marco Marra, Jeffrey Kiefer, Victoria Zismann, Troy McEachron, Bodour Salhia, Joseph Pressey, John Farley, Stephen Anthony, Richard Roden, Heather Cunliffe, David Huntsman, Jeffrey Trent. The rare, highly malignant small cell carcinoma of the ovary displays common inactivating germline and somatic mutations in the tumor suppressor SMARCA4. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 105th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2014 Apr 5-9; San Diego, CA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2014;74(19 Suppl):Abstract nr LB-202. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2014-LB-202
// Kuan-Fu Ding 1, 2 , Darren Finlay 4 , Hongwei Yin 3 , William P.D. Hendricks 3 , Chris Sereduk 3 , Jeffrey Kiefer 3 , Aleksandar Sekulic 3 , Patricia M. LoRusso 5 , Kristiina Vuori 4 , Jeffrey M. Trent 3 , Nicholas J. Schork 1, 2, 3 1 J. Craig Venter Institute, La Jolla, San Diego, CA, USA 2 University of California, San Diego, CA, USA 3 The Translational Genomics Research Institute, Phoenix, AZ, USA 4 Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute, La Jolla, San Diego, CA, USA 5 Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA Correspondence to: Nicholas J. Schork, email: nschork@jcvi.org Keywords: melanoma, high-throughput screening, drug screens, computational modeling, variability Received: July 14, 2016 Accepted: January 27, 2017 Published: February 15, 2017 ABSTRACT High-throughput screening (HTS) strategies and protocols have undergone significant development in the last decade. It is now possible to screen hundreds of thousands of compounds, each exploring multiple biological phenotypes and parameters, against various cell lines or model systems in a single setting. However, given the vast amount of data such studies generate, the fact that they use multiple reagents, and are often technician-intensive, questions have been raised about the variability, reliability and reproducibility of HTS results. Assessments of the impact of the multiple factors in HTS studies could arguably lead to more compelling insights into the robustness of the results of a particular screen, as well as the overall quality of the study. We leveraged classical, yet highly flexible, analysis of variance (ANOVA)-based linear models to explore how different factors contribute to the variation observed in a screening study of four different melanoma cell lines and 120 drugs over nine dosages studied in two independent academic laboratories. We find that factors such as plate effects, appropriate dosing ranges, and to a lesser extent, the laboratory performing the screen, are significant predictors of variation in drug responses across the cell lines. Further, we show that when sources of variation are quantified and controlled for, they contextualize claims of inconsistencies and reveal the overall quality of the HTS studies performed at each participating laboratory. In the context of the broader screening study, we show that our analysis can also elucidate the robust effects of drugs, even those within specific cell lines.
Canine gastric dilatation-volvulus (GDV) is a common life-threatening condition occurring primarily in large and giant breeds with a 3.9% to 36.7% lifetime risk. The genetic correlates of GDV have not previously been systematically explored. We undertook an inter-breed genome-wide association analysis (GWAS) of 253 dogs from ten breeds including 106 healthy dogs and 147 dogs with at least one GDV episode. SNP array genotyping followed by imputation was conducted on 241 samples to identify GDV-associated single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and copy number variations (CNVs). A subset of 33 dogs (15 healthy dogs and 18 GDV patients from the three most represented breeds) was characterized by whole genome sequencing (WGS). After genome-wide Bonferroni correction, we identified a significant putatively protective intergenic SNP (rs851737064) across all breeds. The signal was most significant in Collies, German Shorthaired Pointers, and Great Danes. Subsequent focused analysis across these three breeds identified 12 significant additional putatively protective or deleterious SNPs. Notable significant SNPs included those occurring in genes involved in gastric tone and motility including VHL, NALCN, and PRKCZ. These data provide important new clues to canine GDV risk factors and facilitate generation of hypotheses regarding the genetic and molecular underpinnings this syndrome.
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