Therapeutic management of neuro-oncologic patients - potential relevance of CSF liquid biopsy.

Background: In the era of precision medicine, cancer treatment is increasingly tailored according to tumor-specific genomic alterations. The analysis of tumor-derived circulating nucleic acids in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) by next generation sequencing (NGS) may facilitate precision medicine in the field of CNS cancer. We therefore evaluated whether NGS from CSF of neuro-oncologic patients reliably detects tumor-specific genomic alterations and whether this may help to guide the management of patients with CNS cancer in clinical practice. Patient and methods: CSF samples from 27 patients with various primary and secondary CNS malignancies were collected and evaluated by NGS using a targeted, amplicon-based NGS-panel (Oncomine Focus Assay). All cases were discussed within the framework of a molecular tumor board at the Comprehensive Cancer Center Munich. Results: NGS was technically successful in 23/27 patients (85%). Genomic alterations were detectable in 20/27 patients (74%), 11/27 (40%) of which were potentially actionable. After discussion in the MTB, a change of therapeutic management was recommended in 7/27 (26%) of the cases. However, due to rapid clinical progression, only 4/27 (15%) of the patients were treated according to the recommendation. In a subset of patients (6/27, 22%), a high number of mutations of unknown significance suggestive of a high tumor mutational burden (TMB) were detected. Conclusions: NGS from cerebrospinal fluid is feasible in routine clinical practice and yields therapeutically relevant alterations in a large subset of patients. Integration of this approach into a precision cancer medicine program might help to improve therapeutic options for patients with CNS cancer.

Epithelial-mesenchymal transition induces endoplasmic-reticulum-stress response in human colorectal tumor cells.

Tumor cells are stressed by unfavorable environmental conditions like hypoxia or starvation. Driven by the resulting cellular stress tumor cells undergo epithelial-mesenchymal transition. Additionally, cellular stress is accompanied by endoplasmic reticulum-stress which induces an unfolded protein response. It is unknown if epithelial-mesenchymal transition and endoplasmic reticulum-stress are occurring as independent parallel events or if an interrelationship exists between both of them. Here, we show that in colorectal cancer cells endoplasmic reticulum-stress depends on the induction of ZEB-1, which is a main factor of epithelial-mesenchymal transition. In the absence of ZEB-1 colorectal cancer cells cannot mount endoplasmic reticulum-stress as a reaction on cellular stress situations like hypoxia or starvation. Thus, our data suggest that there is a hierarchy in the development of cellular stress which starts with the presence of environmental stress that induces epithelial-mesenchymal transition which allows finally endoplasmic reticulum-stress. This finding highlights the central role of epithelial-mesenchymal transition during the process of tumorigenesis as epithelial-mesenchymal transition is also associated with chemoresistance and cancer stemness. Consequently, endoplasmic reticulum-stress might be a well suited target for chemotherapy of colorectal cancers.

Antibody validation by combining immunohistochemistry and protein extraction from formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded tissues.

AIMS: Personalized cancer treatment strategies depend on comprehensive and detailed characterization of individual human malignancies. Clinical pathology, particularly immunohistochemical evaluation of biomarkers in tissues, is considered to be the approved standard for diagnostic and therapeutic decisions, having a direct influence on patient management and therapy. Although antibody-based approaches are established and integrated successfully into both clinical and research applications, for personalized treatment regimens new demands have been placed on the quality, reproducibility and accuracy of antibody-based assays. To ensure the accuracy of specific antigen detection in immunohistochemistry, we introduce a novel approach for antibody validation. METHODS AND RESULTS: In a tandem approach we used the same archival tissue of interest for antibody validation by combining extraction of immunoreactive proteins from formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded tissue with Western blot analysis and immunohistochemistry. This procedure allows for specification of the antigen detected and for localization of the protein in the tissue. Of the 32 antibodies tested used in research and routine diagnostics, 19 showed reliable specificity in both assays. CONCLUSION: This study emphasizes the advantage of combining suitable methods to ensure reproducibility and specific antigen detection. Based on our results, we propose a novel step-by-step strategy to validate antibody specificity and reduce variability of immunohistochemical results.

Influence of RET/PTC1 and RET/PTC3 oncoproteins in radiation-induced papillary thyroid carcinomas on amounts of cytoskeletal protein species.

Radiation-induced human papillary thyroid carcinomas (PTCs) show a high prevalence of fusions of the RET proto-oncogene to heterologous genes H4 (RET/PTC1) and ELE1 (RET/PTC3), respectively. In contrast to the normal membrane-bound RET protein, aberrant RET fusion proteins are constitutively active oncogenic cytosolic proteins that can lead to malignant transformation of thyroid epithelia. To detect specific tumor-associated protein changes that reflect the effect of RET/PTC fusion proteins, we analyzed normal thyroid tissues, thyroid tumors of the RET/PTC1 and RET/PTC3 type and their respective lymph node metastases by a combination of high-resolution two-dimensional electrophoresis and matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization-mass spectrometry. PTCs without RET rearrangements served as controls. Several cytoskeletal protein species showed quantitative changes in tumors and lymph node metastases harboring RET/PTC1 or RET/PTC3. We observed prominent C-terminal actin fragments assumedly generated by protease cleavages induced due to enhanced amounts of the active actin-binding protein cofilin-1. In addition, three truncated vimentin species, one of which was proven to be headless, were shown to be highly abundant in tumors and metastases of both RET/PTC types. The observed protein changes are closely connected with the constitutive activation of RET-rearranged oncoproteins and reflect the importance to elucidate disease-related typical signatures on the protein species level.

The cancer stem cell marker CD133 has high prognostic impact but unknown functional relevance for the metastasis of human colon cancer.

In colon cancer, CD133 has recently been used to enrich for a subset of tumour cells with tumour-initiating capabilities and was therefore suggested to mark colon cancer stem cells. However, this molecule has surprisingly been shown to lack functional importance for tumour initiation itself. Herein, we investigated whether CD133 may be relevant for colon cancer metastasis in patients, and as metastasis requires several additional biological characteristics besides tumour initiation, we examined the effects of knocking down CD133 expression in colon cancer cell lines on proliferation, migration, invasion, and colony formation. We demonstrate that high CD133 expression correlates strongly with synchronous liver metastasis in a matched case-control collection, while siRNA-mediated knock down of this factor has no significant effect on the mentioned biological characteristics. Thus, we conclude that CD133 expression is a marker with high prognostic impact for colon cancer, while it seems to have no obvious functional role as a driving force of this malignancy.

Stem cells and experimental leukemia can be distinguished by lipid raft protein composition.

The stable transfection of the canine CD34(-) multipotent cell line DO64 with retroviral constructs containing the cDNA for the canine major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class II DR genes led to the cell clone DO64#14, which is characterized by malignant transformation and tumor growth in nonobese diabetic/severe combined immunodeficient (NOD/SCID) mice. The additional expression of p27(kip-1) in the transformed cell clone partially reversed the malignant phenotype. Because several proteins associated with lipid rafts are involved in signal transduction and because changes of lipid raft composition are linked to the pathogenesis of leukemias, raft-associated proteins in DO64 cells and the deduced transformed cell clones were compared using a proteomic approach. Raft-associated proteins were separated by two-dimensional electrophoresis and identified by MALDI-TOF-MS. Here we show that the stem cell line DO64 and the deduced cell clones can clearly be distinguished by differences in the expression of a number of raft-associated proteins, namely caveolin-1, flotillin- 1, vimentin, galectin-3, and glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase. All identified proteins play an important role in cellular functions and may therefore participate in raft-mediated leukemic transformation. Therefore, our study suggests that the analysis of lipid raft protein composition may be useful for the identification of molecular markers of the transformation process.

Detection and identification of tumor-associated protein variants in human hepatocellular carcinomas.

The proteomic approach is a valuable tool to detect and identify proteins that are associated with cancer. In previous investigations on experimentally induced rat hepatomas, we detected aldose reductase-like protein (ARLP) as a highly significant marker protein. Our present study was intended to look for the presence of similar tumor-associated marker proteins on human hepatocellular carcinomas (HCC). We found several novel tumor-associated protein variants that represent members of the aldo-keto reductase (AKR) superfamily. Human aldose reductase-like protein-1 (hARLP-1) was the most prominent tumor-associated AKR member detected in HCC by 2-dimensional electrophoresis (2-DE) and identified by mass spectrometric fingerprinting. The enzyme was found in 4 distinct forms (hARLP-1, 36/7.4 (kd/pI); hARLP-2, 36/7.2; hARLP-3, 36/6.4; and hARLP-4, 33/7.35). In addition, a human aldose reductase-like protein (hARLP-5, 36/7.6) was identified that differed from hARLP-1 by 1 amino acid (D313N), indicating 2 allelic forms of the human aldose reductase-like gene. A novel antibody directed against common parts of the hARLPs revealed hARLP reactivity in human HCC by immunohistochemistry. Furthermore, aldose reductase (AR) was identified and characterized as a tumor-associated variant. In conclusion, in all investigated human HCCs at least one of the various types of the described tumor-associated proteins of the AKR superfamily was clearly present. Of these HCC samples, 95% were positive for hARLPs as proven by 2-DE analysis and/or by use of the antibody directed against hARLP. Thus, hARLP is a strong candidate for use as an immunohistochemical diagnostic marker of human HCC.