Double minute chromosomes are extrachromosomal circular DNA fragments frequently found in brain tumors. To understand their evolution, we characterized the double minutes in paired diagnosis and relapse tumors from a pediatric high-grade glioma and four adult glioblastoma patients. We determined the full structures of the major double minutes using a novel approach combining multiple types of supporting genomic evidence. Among the double minutes identified in the pediatric patient, only one carrying EGFR was maintained at high abundance in both samples, whereas two others were present in only trace amounts at diagnosis but abundant at relapse, and the rest were found either in the relapse sample only or in the diagnosis sample only. For the EGFR-carrying double minutes, we found a secondary somatic deletion in all copies at relapse, after erlotinib treatment. However, the somatic mutation was present at very low frequency at diagnosis, suggesting potential resistance to the EGFR inhibitor. This mutation caused an in-frame RNA transcript to skip exon 16, a novel transcript isoform absent in EST database, as well as about 700 RNA-seq of normal brains that we reviewed. We observed similar patterns involving longitudinal copy number shift of double minutes in another four pairs (diagnosis/relapse) of adult glioblastoma. Overall, in three of five paired tumor samples, we found that although the same oncogenes were amplified at diagnosis and relapse, they were amplified on different double minutes. Our results suggest that double minutes readily evolve, increasing tumor heterogeneity rapidly. Understanding patterns of double minute evolution can shed light on future therapeutic solutions to brain tumors carrying such variants.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1007/s00401-018-1912-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Vitamin D3 is a promising preventative and therapeutic agent for prostate cancer, but its implementation is hampered by a lack of understanding about its mechanism of action. Upon treatment with 1α,25 dihydroxyvitamin D3 (vitamin D3), the metabolically active form of vitamin D3, adult prostate progenitor/stem cells (PrP/SC) undergo cell-cycle arrest, senescence, and differentiation to an androgen receptor-positive luminal epithelial cell fate. Microarray analyses of control- and vitamin D3-treated PrP/SC revealed global gene expression signatures consistent with induction of differentiation. Interestingly, one of the most highly-upregulated genes by vitamin D3 was the pro-inflammatory cytokine interleukin-1 alpha (IL1α). Systems biology analyses supported a central role for IL1α in the vitamin D3 response in PrP/SC. siRNA-mediated knockdown of IL1α abrogated vitamin D3-induced growth suppression, establishing a requirement for IL1α in the anti-proliferative effects of vitamin D3 in PrP/SC. These studies establish a system to study the molecular profile of PrP/SC differentiation, proliferation, and senescence, and they point to an important new role for IL1α in vitamin D3 signaling in prostate progenitor/stem cells.
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