MB-84. IDENTIFICATION OF MEDULLOBLASTOMA MOLECULAR SUBGROUPS USING METABOLITE PROFILES Sarah Kohe1,2, Simrandip K. Gill1,2, Debbie Hicks3, Ed C. Schwalbe3, Stephen Crosier3, Lisa Storer4, Anbarasu Lourdusamy4, Christopher D. Bennett1,2, Martin Wilson1,2, Simon Bailey3, Daniel Williamson3, Richard G. Grundy4, Steven C. Clifford3, and Andrew C. Peet1,2; Institute of Cancer and Genomic Sciences, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK; Birmingham Childrens Hospital, Birmingham, UK; Northern Institute for Cancer Research, Newcastle University, Newcastle, UK; Childrens Brain Tumour Research Centre, Queens Medical Centre, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK Identification of the four consensus molecular subgroups of medulloblastoma is becoming increasingly important for determining risk-based treatment strategies. Metabolite profiles can distinguish between brain tumour types, therefore we investigated whether profiling can discriminate the molecular subgroups within medulloblastoma. Metabolite concentrations were determined using high resolution magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) on biopsied tissue from 29 medulloblastomas. Molecular subgroup was determined by Illumina 450K DNA methylation array and consensus clustering. Mean metabolite concentrations showed taurine, characteristic of PNETs, was prominent in all subgroups. Lipid was significantly elevated in high-risk Group 3 tumours (n 1⁄4 5, p , 0.0002) consistent with it being a marker of poor prognosis. The ratio of glutamate to glutamine was significantly higher in SHH (n 1⁄4 6), and lower in Group 4 (n 1⁄4 15), p , 0.03. Decreased creatine was detected in SHH tumours, p , 0.002. Only low risk WNT tumours (n 1⁄4 3) contained GABA suggesting it may be a subgroup specific marker, supported by links between GABA and WNT signalling in the developing cerebellum. Glycine, typically associated with poor prognosis, was also significantly lower in WNT tumours (p , 0.003). Multivariate PLS discriminant analysis found metabolite profiles could discriminate subgroup with a classification accuracy of 85% in this pilot set. Lipid, glutamate, glutamine, taurine, hypotaurine, GABA, myoinositol, glycine and creatine were most discriminatory. Matched 1.5T in-vivo MRS concentrations (n 1⁄4 19) found significant correlations with ex-vivo values for taurine, glutamate, glutamine, glycine, creatine, and myoinositol (Pearson’s r range:0.61-0.67, p , 0.05). Identified profiles will inform non-invasive MRS methods for pre-operative subgroup identification, with potential to guide extent of surgical resection and enhanced disease monitoring. Neuro-Oncology 18:iii97–iii122, 2016. doi:10.1093/neuonc/now076.80 #The Author(s) 2016. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Neuro-Oncology. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.
Magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) aids noninvasive diagnosis of pediatric brain tumors, but use in clinical practice is not well documented. We aimed to review clinical use of MRS, establish added value in noninvasive diagnosis, and investigate potential impact on patient care.Sixty-nine children with lesions imaged using MRS and reviewed by the tumor board from 2014 to 2016 met inclusion criteria. Contemporaneous MRI diagnosis, spectroscopy analysis, histopathology, and clinical information were reviewed. Final diagnosis was agreed on by the tumor board at study end.Five cases were excluded for lack of documented MRI diagnosis. The principal MRI diagnosis by pediatric radiologists was correct in 59%, increasing to 73% with addition of MRS. Of the 73%, 19.1% (95% CI, 9.1%-33.3%) were incorrectly diagnosed with MRI alone. MRS led to a significant improvement in correct diagnosis over all tumor types (P = .012). Of diagnoses correctly made with MRI, confidence increased by 37% when adding MRS, with no patients incorrectly re-diagnosed. Indolent lesions were diagnosed noninvasively in 85% of cases, with MRS a major contributor to 91% of these diagnoses. Of all patients, 39% were managed without histopathological diagnosis. MRS contributed to diagnosis in 68% of this group, modifying it in 12%. MRS influenced management in 33% of cases, mainly through avoiding and guiding biopsy and aiding tumor characterization.MRS can improve accuracy and confidence in noninvasive diagnosis of pediatric brain lesions in clinical practice. There is potential to improve outcomes through avoiding biopsy of indolent lesions, aiding tumor characterization, and facilitating earlier family discussions and treatment planning.
The rare pediatric embryonal tumors retinoblastoma, medulloblastoma and neuroblastoma derive from neuroectodermal tissue and share similar histopathological features despite different anatomical locations and diverse clinical outcomes. As metabolism can reflect genetic and histological features, we investigated whether the metabolism of embryonal tumors reflects their similar histology, shared developmental and neural origins, or tumor location. We undertook metabolic profiling on 50 retinoblastoma, 39 medulloblastoma and 70 neuroblastoma using high resolution magic angle spinning magnetic resonance spectroscopy (1H-MRS). Mean metabolite concentrations identified several metabolites that were significantly different between the tumor groups including taurine, hypotaurine, glutamate, glutamine, GABA, phosphocholine, N-acetylaspartate, creatine, glycine and myoinositol, p < 0.0017. Unsupervised multivariate analysis found that each tumor group clustered separately, with a unique metabolic profile, influenced by their underlying clinical diversity. Taurine was notably high in all tumors consistent with prior evidence from embryonal tumors. Retinoblastoma and medulloblastoma were more metabolically similar, sharing features associated with the central nervous system (CNS). Neuroblastoma had features consistent with neural tissue, but also contained significantly higher myoinositol and altered glutamate-glutamine ratio, suggestive of differences in the underlying metabolism of embryonal tumors located outside of the CNS. Despite the histological similarities and shared neural metabolic features, we show that individual neuroectodermal derived embryonal tumors can be distinguished by tissue metabolic profile. Pathway analysis suggests the alanine-aspartate-glutamate and taurine-hypotaurine metabolic pathways may be the most pertinent pathways to investigate for novel therapeutic strategies. This work strengthens our understanding of the biology and metabolic pathways underlying neuroectodermal derived embryonal tumors of childhood.
Paediatric brain tumors are becoming well characterized due to large genomic and epigenomic studies. Metabolomics is a powerful analytical approach aiding in the characterization of tumors. This study shows that common cerebellar tumors have metabolite profiles sufficiently different to build accurate, robust diagnostic classifiers, and that the metabolite profiles can be used to assess differences in metabolism between the tumors. Tissue metabolite profiles were obtained from cerebellar ependymoma (n = 18), medulloblastoma (n = 36), pilocytic astrocytoma (n = 24) and atypical teratoid/rhabdoid tumors (n = 5) samples using HR-MAS. Quantified metabolites accurately discriminated the tumors; classification accuracies were 94% for ependymoma and medulloblastoma and 92% for pilocytic astrocytoma. Using current intraoperative examination the diagnostic accuracy was 72% for ependymoma, 90% for medulloblastoma and 89% for pilocytic astrocytoma. Elevated myo-inositol was characteristic of ependymoma whilst high taurine, phosphocholine and glycine distinguished medulloblastoma. Glutamine, hypotaurine and N-acetylaspartate (NAA) were increased in pilocytic astrocytoma. High lipids, phosphocholine and glutathione were important for separating ATRTs from medulloblastomas. This study demonstrates the ability of metabolic profiling by HR-MAS on small biopsy tissue samples to characterize these tumors. Analysis of tissue metabolite profiles has advantages in terms of minimal tissue pre-processing, short data acquisition time giving the potential to be used as part of a rapid diagnostic work-up.
Abstract 1 H‐magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) has the potential to improve the noninvasive diagnostic accuracy for paediatric brain tumours. However, studies analysing large, comprehensive, multicentre datasets are lacking, hindering translation to widespread clinical practice. Single‐voxel MRS (point‐resolved single‐voxel spectroscopy sequence, 1.5 T: echo time [TE] 23–37 ms/135–144 ms, repetition time [TR] 1500 ms; 3 T: TE 37–41 ms/135–144 ms, TR 2000 ms) was performed from 2003 to 2012 during routine magnetic resonance imaging for a suspected brain tumour on 340 children from five hospitals with 464 spectra being available for analysis and 281 meeting quality control. Mean spectra were generated for 13 tumour types. Mann–Whitney U ‐tests and Kruskal–Wallis tests were used to compare mean metabolite concentrations. Receiver operator characteristic curves were used to determine the potential for individual metabolites to discriminate between specific tumour types. Principal component analysis followed by linear discriminant analysis was used to construct a classifier to discriminate the three main central nervous system tumour types in paediatrics. Mean concentrations of metabolites were shown to differ significantly between tumour types. Large variability existed across each tumour type, but individual metabolites were able to aid discrimination between some tumour types of importance. Complete metabolite profiles were found to be strongly characteristic of tumour type and, when combined with the machine learning methods, demonstrated a diagnostic accuracy of 93% for distinguishing between the three main tumour groups (medulloblastoma, pilocytic astrocytoma and ependymoma). The accuracy of this approach was similar even when data of marginal quality were included, greatly reducing the proportion of MRS excluded for poor quality. Children's brain tumours are strongly characterised by MRS metabolite profiles readily acquired during routine clinical practice, and this information can be used to support noninvasive diagnosis. This study provides both key evidence and an important resource for the future use of MRS in the diagnosis of children's brain tumours.