Mutant p53 Together with TGFß Signaling Influence Organ-Specific Hematogenous Colonization Patterns of Pancreatic Cancer.

Purpose: TP53 and the TGFß pathway are major mediators of pancreatic cancer metastasis. The mechanisms by which they cause hematogenous metastasis have not been fully explored.Experimental Design:KPC (LSL-KRASG12D/+;LSL-Trp53R172H/+; Ptf1aCre/+) mice were generated, and the frequency and morphology of organ-specific hematogenous metastases compared with that seen in KPTC and KTC littermates (Tgfbr2+/-). Key findings were validated in primary cells from each genotype and samples of human pancreatic cancer liver metastases.Results: The frequency of hematogenous metastasis in KPTC mice was significantly lower than for KPC mice (41% vs. 68%, P < 0.05), largely due to a reduction in liver metastases. No differences were found between KPC and KPTC lung metastases, whereas liver metastases in KPTC mice showed a profound extravasation deficiency characterized by sinusoidal growth and lack of desmoplastic stroma. Analogous findings were confirmed in liver samples from patients indicating their clinical relevance. Portal vein colonization as a direct mode of access to the liver was observed in both mice and humans. Secretome analyses of KPC cells revealed an abundance of secreted prometastatic mediators including Col6A1 and Lcn2 that promoted early steps of metastatic colonization. These mediators were overexpressed in primary tumors but not metastases, suggesting that the ability to colonize is, in part, developed within the primary site, a phenomenon we refer to as the "Cinderella effect."Conclusions: These findings establish a novel paradigm for understanding pancreatic cancer metastasis and the observed clinical latencies of liver versus lung metastases specifically. Clin Cancer Res; 23(6); 1607-20. ©2016 AACR.

Limited heterogeneity of known driver gene mutations among the metastases of individual patients with pancreatic cancer.

The extent of heterogeneity among driver gene mutations present in naturally occurring metastases-that is, treatment-naive metastatic disease-is largely unknown. To address this issue, we carried out 60× whole-genome sequencing of 26 metastases from four patients with pancreatic cancer. We found that identical mutations in known driver genes were present in every metastatic lesion for each patient studied. Passenger gene mutations, which do not have known or predicted functional consequences, accounted for all intratumoral heterogeneity. Even with respect to these passenger mutations, our analysis suggests that the genetic similarity among the founding cells of metastases was higher than that expected for any two cells randomly taken from a normal tissue. The uniformity of known driver gene mutations among metastases in the same patient has critical and encouraging implications for the success of future targeted therapies in advanced-stage disease.

Quantification of nucleic acid quality in postmortem tissues from a cancer research autopsy program.

The last decade has seen a marked rise in the use of cancer tissues obtained from research autopsies. Such resources have been invaluable for studying cancer evolution or the mechanisms of therapeutic resistance to targeted therapies. Degradation of biomolecules is a potential challenge to usage of cancer tissues obtained in the post-mortem setting and remains incompletely studied. We analysed the nucleic acid quality in 371 different frozen tissue samples collected from 80 patients who underwent a research autopsy, including eight normal tissue types, primary and metastatic tumors. Our results indicate that RNA integrity number (RIN) of normal tissues decline with the elongation of post-mortem interval (PMI) in a tissue-type specific manner. Unlike normal tissues, the RNA quality of cancer tissues is highly variable with respect to post-mortem interval. The kinetics of DNA damage also has tissue type-specific features. Moreover, while DNA degradation is an indicator of low RNA quality, the converse is not true. Finally, we show that despite RIN values as low as 5.0, robust data can be obtained by RNA sequencing that reliably discriminates expression signatures.

Recurrent, truncating SOX9 mutations are associated with SOX9 overexpression, KRAS mutation, and TP53 wild type status in colorectal carcinoma.

PURPOSE: The extent to which the developmental transcription factor SOX9 functions as an oncogene or tumor suppressor in colorectal carcinoma (CRC) is debatable. We aimed to clarify the effect of SOX9 mutations on SOX9 protein expression and their association with known molecular subtypes and clinical characteristics in advanced CRC. EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN: Next generation sequencing data (MSK-IMPACT) from CRC patients was used to interrogate SOX9, KRAS, NRAS, BRAF, TP53, APC, and PIK3CA. Mutant and wild type (WT) SOX9 cases underwent immunohistochemical (IHC) staining to assess protein expression. SOX9 allele-specific copy number was assessed by Affymetrix Oncoscan array. RESULTS: SOX9 was mutated in 38 of 353 (10.7%) CRC, of which 82% were frameshift or nonsense. Compared to SOX9 WT, SOX9 mutation was strongly associated with coexistent mutant KRAS (p=0.0001) and WT TP53 (p=0.0004). SOX9 was overexpressed in both SOX9 mutant and WT CRC. Among SOX9 mutants, the highest expression was noted for truncating exon 3 mutants (mean H scores 239±105 versus 147±119, p value=0.02). Further, SOX9 truncating mutants with loss of the WT allele demonstrated protein overexpression indicating the WT protein was not required for protein stabilization. CONCLUSIONS: SOX9 is overexpressed in CRC, including those with recurrent distal truncating mutations. The latter has structural similarity to the oncogenic isoform MiniSOX9, which is distally truncated due to aberrant splicing. This information suggests that truncated SOX9 has oncogenic features. SOX9 mutations are highly enriched in KRAS mutant and TP53 wild type CRC; and may provide a therapeutic target in approximately 11% of CRC.