No abstract

Background Gastric cancer (GC) is a leading cause of cancer deaths, and an increased number of GC patients adopt to next-generation sequencing (NGS) to identify tumor genomic alterations for precision medicine. Methods In this study, we established a hybridization capture-based NGS panel including 612 cancer-associated genes, and collected sequencing data of tumors and matched bloods from 153 gastric cancer patients. We performed comprehensive analysis of these sequencing and clinical data. Results 35 significantly mutated genes were identified such as TP53 , AKAP9 , DRD2 , PTEN , CDH1 , LRP2 et al. Among them, 29 genes were novel significantly mutated genes compared with TCGA study. TP53 is the top frequently mutated gene, and tends to mutate in male (p = 0.025) patients and patients whose tumor located in cardia (p = 0.011). High tumor mutation burden (TMB) gathered in TP53 wild-type tumors (p = 0.045). TMB was also significantly associated with DNA damage repair (DDR) genes genotype (p = 0.047), Lauren classification (p = 1.5e−5), differentiation (1.9e−7), and HER2 status (p = 0.023). 38.31% of gastric cancer patients harbored at least one actionable alteration according to OncoKB database. Conclusions We drew a comprehensive mutational landscape of 153 gastric tumors and demonstrated utility of target next-generation sequencing to guide clinical management. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1186/s12967-019-1941-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

The N(6)-methyladenosine (m6A) modification is the most pervasive modification of human RNAs. In recent years, an increasing number of studies have suggested that m6A likely plays important roles in cancers. Many studies have demonstrated that m6A is involved in the biological functions of cancer cells, such as proliferation, invasion, metastasis, and drug resistance. In addition, m6A is closely related to the prognosis of cancer patients. In this review, we highlight recent advances in understanding the function of m6A in various cancers. We emphasize the importance of m6A to cancer progression and look forward to describe future research directions.