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The histone variant mutation H3.3-G34W occurs in the majority of giant cell tumor of bone (GCTB). By profiling patient-derived GCTB tumor cells, the authors show that this mutation associates with epigenetic alterations in heterochromatic and bivalent regions that contribute to an impaired osteogenic differentiation and the osteolytic phenotype of GCTB.

MiRNAs are discussed as diagnostic and therapeutic molecules. However, effective miRNA drug treatments with miRNAs are, so far, hampered by the complexity of the miRNA networks. To identify potential miRNA drugs in colorectal cancer, we profiled miRNA and mRNA expression in matching normal, tumor and metastasis tissues of eight patients by Illumina sequencing. We validated six miRNAs in a large tissue screen containing 16 additional tumor entities and identified miRNA-1, miRNA-129, miRNA-497 and miRNA-215 as constantly de-regulated within the majority of cancers. Of these, we investigated miRNA-1 as representative in a systems-biology simulation of cellular cancer models implemented in PyBioS and assessed the effects of depletion as well as overexpression in terms of miRNA-1 as a potential treatment option. In this system, miRNA-1 treatment reverted the disease phenotype with different effectiveness among the patients. Scoring the gene expression changes obtained through mRNA-Seq from the same patients we show that the combination of deep sequencing and systems biological modeling can help to identify patient-specific responses to miRNA treatments. We present this data as guideline for future pre-clinical assessments of new and personalized therapeutic options.