Abstract P2-06-04: Pathognomonic long molecule footprints of backup repair pathways in homologous recombination deficient cancers

Background: Cancer genomes provide a durable record of the genetic alterations that are acquired during normal cell development and carcinogenesis from DNA damage and DNA repair defects. As DNA repair-deficient tumors often become dependent on backup repair pathways, mutational signatures found in such tumors are thought to reflect the absence of a particular repair pathway as well as the activity of the backup repair mechanism responsible for maintaining genome integrity. While homologous recombination (HR) deficiency is primarily a disorder of double-strand break (DSB) repair, the mutation classes most specifically associated with HR-deficiency in cancer are paradoxically small variants, namely single nucleotide variants and short deletions. Mechanistic and cytogenetic studies, however, indicate that HR-deficiency should compromise structural genomic integrity and yield complex rearrangements. Here we elucidate complex structural variants that are specific for HR-deficient cancers and identify rearrangements that differentiate BRCA1 from BRCA2 loss and illuminate divergent backup DNA repair mechanisms. Methods: To investigate the role of complex SVs in HR-deficient cancers, we assembled a cohort of 2,367 WGS profiles from four tumor types (breast, ovarian, prostate, and pancreatic cancer) known to be associated with HR-deficiency. We identified 48 BRCA1-/- and 87 BRCA2-/- cases and called samples lacking (mono- or biallelic) mutations in BRCA1, BRCA2, or any other HR associated gene (e.g. PALB2, RAD51C) as wild-type. To validate observed structural variant patterns associated with homologous recombination deficiency from this larger dataset, a new cohort of 49 cases of invasive breast cancer with known BRCA1 (N = 29) or BRCA2 (N = 20) deficiency was collected as part of a prospective research study at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and sequenced with 10X-linked read WGS in addition to standard Illumina short-read WGS. Results: Analysis of nearly 2,400 short-read whole genomes revealed distinct quasi-reciprocal structural variants (SVs) highly enriched in BRCA1-/- versus BRCA2-/- cancers. Applying high physical coverage (>150X) long molecule WGS to 49 tumor-normal pairs from breast cancer patients with inherited BRCA1 or BRCA2 loss-of-function mutations, we show that these SVs are associated with distinct cis or trans somatic allelic phases despite having nearly identical short read WGS footprints. Trans (crossover) outcomes were found to give rise to large-scale chromosomal variants that mediate the loss-of-heterozygosity patterns previously described as a cardinal feature of HR-deficient cancers. We find that these quasi-reciprocal SVs can be explained as distinct template switching outcomes from a shared intermediate arising after replication fork stalling in HR-deficient cancers. Furthermore, our WGS analyses reveal that BRCA2 genomes are highly enriched in deletions that harbor long (50-1000bp) tracts of inexact microhomology. These events, validated by long molecule WGS, indicate that single-stranded annealing serves as an active backup repair pathway in BRCA2-/- but not BRCA1-/- cancers. Conclusions: These results provide direct genomic evidence linking large-scale structural changes in HR-deficient tumors with specific backup repair pathways that suggest novel, therapeutically targetable dependencies. Our findings elucidate backup repair mechanisms responsible for generating structural variation in HR-deficient tumors, demonstrate the genotype-specific divergence of such compensatory DNA repair, and provide genomic features that improve the detection accuracy of HR-deficiency with utility for the optimal selection of treatment. Citation Format: Jeremy Setton, Kevin Hadi, Huasong Tian, Arnaud Da Cruz Paula, Joel Rosiene, Zi-Ning Choo, Julie Behr, Xiaotong Yao, Olivier Elemento, Britta Weigelt, Nadeem Riaz, Jorge S Reis-Filho, Marcin Imielinski, Simon N Powell. Pathognomonic long molecule footprints of backup repair pathways in homologous recombination deficient cancers [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 2021 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium; 2021 Dec 7-10; San Antonio, TX. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2022;82(4 Suppl):Abstract nr P2-06-04.