1. Uncovering Clinically Relevant Gene Fusions with Integrated Genomic and Transcriptomic Profiling of Metastatic Cancers
- Author
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James T. Topham, Caralyn Reisle, Cameron J. Grisdale, Jonathan M. Loree, Reanne Bowlby, Sophie Sun, Karen Mungall, Basile Tessier-Cloutier, Laura Williamson, Marco A. Marra, Erin Pleasance, Caleb Choo, Andrew J. Mungall, Richard A. Moore, Daniel J. Renouf, Tony Ng, David F. Schaeffer, Stephen Yip, Joanna M Karasinska, Eric Chuah, Yongjun Zhao, Daniel MacMillan, Janessa Laskin, Marcus Carreira, Steven J.M. Jones, Erica S Tsang, and Howard John Lim
- Subjects
0301 basic medicine ,Cancer Research ,Oncogene Proteins, Fusion ,Colorectal cancer ,Computational biology ,Biology ,Transcriptome ,03 medical and health sciences ,0302 clinical medicine ,Neoplasms ,Exome Sequencing ,medicine ,Humans ,RNA-Seq ,Neoplasm Metastasis ,Gene ,Retrospective Studies ,Contig ,Gene Expression Profiling ,Breakpoint ,Structural variant ,Genomics ,medicine.disease ,Advanced cancer ,3. Good health ,Treatment Outcome ,030104 developmental biology ,Oncology ,030220 oncology & carcinogenesis ,Gene Fusion - Abstract
Purpose:Gene fusions are important oncogenic drivers and many are actionable. Whole-genome and transcriptome (WGS and RNA-seq, respectively) sequencing can discover novel clinically relevant fusions.Experimental Design:Using WGS and RNA-seq, we reviewed the prevalence of fusions in a cohort of 570 patients with cancer, and compared prevalence to that predicted with commercially available panels. Fusions were annotated using a consensus variant calling pipeline (MAVIS) and required that a contig of the breakpoint could be constructed and supported from ≥2 structural variant detection approaches.Results:In 570 patients with advanced cancer, MAVIS identified 81 recurrent fusions by WGS and 111 by RNA-seq, of which 18 fusions by WGS and 19 by RNA-seq were noted in at least 3 separate patients. The most common fusions were EML4-ALK in thoracic malignancies (9/69, 13%), and CMTM8-CMTM7 in colorectal cancer (4/73, 5.5%). Combined genomic and transcriptomic analysis identified novel fusion partners for clinically relevant genes, such as NTRK2 (novel partners: SHC3, DAPK1), and NTRK3 (novel partners: POLG, PIBF1).Conclusions:Utilizing WGS/RNA-seq facilitates identification of novel fusions in clinically relevant genes, and detected a greater proportion than commercially available panels are expected to find. A significant benefit of WGS and RNA-seq is the innate ability to retrospectively identify variants that becomes clinically relevant over time, without the need for additional testing, which is not possible with panel-based approaches.
- Published
- 2021