Insertional mutagenesis defines drivers and evolutionary relationships in pancreatic cancer metastasis

Abstract

Metastasis is a defining feature of pancreatic cancer, impacting patient quality of life and therapeutic outcomes. While recurrent mutations in KRAS and TP53 play important roles in primary tumor development and persist in metastases, the contributions of other genes to the metastatic process is understudied. Here, we define a network of metastasis-promoting genes and uncover positively selected genes in metastatic lesions from our Sleeping Beauty mouse model of pancreatic cancer using our recently described SB Driver Analysis statistical pipeline. We show that loss of single genes DLG1, PARD3, PKP4 and PTPRK promote pancreas cancer progression in a context-specific manner. Finally, we define clonal and sub-clonal insertion events that distinguish primary and individual metastatic tumors and use single cell sequencing to gain insight into the evolutionary relationships between sub-regions of primary pancreatic tumors and related metastases, which has important implications for pancreatic disease progression and therapeutic opportunities for patients.