Molecular alterations in endometrial cancer: implications for clinical management

Over the last decades, advances have been made in the treatment of endometrial cancer. The clinicopathological risk stratification for postoperative therapy has considerably reduced overtreatment by refining indications and introducing treatment with fewer side effects. Despite refinement in the use of postoperative radiation therapy in EC, over- and under- treatment remain a clinical problem. This may be caused by the limited accuracy of the clinicopathological risk stratification to select patients of higher risk of recurrence. The lack of reproducibility of pathologists to diagnose tumor type and grade may also limit the accuracy of the clinicopathological risk stratification. Expert gyneco-pathology review and a two-tiered grading system will lead to more accurate and reproducible diagnoses. Nonetheless, there is pressing need to understand tumor behavior and design tailored treatments to further improve risk stratification. The identification of molecular markers predictive of recurrence risk or treatment benefit beyond current clinicopathological factors would represent a major advance. The aims of this thesis were to gain insight in the molecular alterations of endometrial cancer and to identify prognostic markers in endometrial cancer to refine clinicopathological risk assessment and direct adjuvant therapy.LUMC / Geneeskund

Practical guidance for mismatch repair-deficiency testing in endometrial cancer

MTG8 - Moleculaire pathologie van gynecologische tumore

Folate receptor-alpha targeted near-infrared fluorescence imaging in high-risk endometrial cancer patients: a tissue microarray and clinical feasibility study

Surgical oncolog

Androgen receptor profiling predicts prostate cancer outcome

Prostate cancer is the second most prevalent malignancy in men. Biomarkers for outcome prediction are urgently needed, so that high-risk patients could be monitored more closely postoperatively. To identify prognostic markers and to determine causal players in prostate cancer progression, we assessed changes in chromatin state during tumor development and progression. Based on this, we assessed genomewide androgen receptor/chromatin binding and identified a distinct androgen receptor/chromatin binding profile between primary prostate cancers and tumors with an acquired resistance to therapy. These differential androgen receptor/chromatin interactions dictated expression of a distinct gene signature with strong prognostic potential. Further refinement of the signature provided us with a concise list of nine genes that hallmark prostate cancer outcome in multiple independent validation series. In this report, we identified a novel gene expression signature for prostate cancer outcome through generation of multilevel genomic data on chromatin accessibility and transcriptional regulation and integration with publically available transcriptomic and clinical datastreams. By combining existing technologies, we propose a novel pipeline for biomarker discovery that is easily implementable in other fields of oncology

Exploiting a subtype-specific mitochondrial vulnerability for successful treatment of colorectal peritoneal metastases

Peritoneal metastases (PMs) from colorectal cancer (CRC) respond poorly to treatment and are associated with unfavorable prognosis. For example, the addition of hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy (HIPEC) to cytoreductive surgery in resectable patients shows limited benefit, and novel treatments are urgently needed. The majority of CRC-PMs represent the CMS4 molecular subtype of CRC, and here we queried the vulnerabilities of this subtype in pharmacogenomic databases to identify novel therapies. This reveals the copper ionophore elesclomol (ES) as highly effective against CRC-PMs. ES exhibits rapid cytotoxicity against CMS4 cells by targeting mitochondria. We find that a markedly reduced mitochondrial content in CMS4 cells explains their vulnerability to ES. ES demonstrates efficacy in preclinical models of PMs, including CRC-PMs and ovarian cancer organoids, mouse models, and a HIPEC rat model of PMs. The above proposes ES as a promising candidate for the local treatment of CRC-PMs, with broader implications for other PM-prone cancers

Multilevel genomics of colorectal cancers with microsatellite instability—clinical impact of JAK1 mutations and consensus molecular subtype 1

Background Approximately 15% of primary colorectal cancers have DNA mismatch repair deficiency, causing a complex genome with thousands of small mutations—the microsatellite instability (MSI) phenotype. We investigated molecular heterogeneity and tumor immunogenicity in relation to clinical endpoints within this distinct subtype of colorectal cancers. Methods A total of 333 primary MSI+ colorectal tumors from multiple cohorts were analyzed by multilevel genomics and computational modeling—including mutation profiling, clonality modeling, and neoantigen prediction in a subset of the tumors, as well as gene expression profiling for consensus molecular subtypes (CMS) and immune cell infiltration. Results Novel, frequent frameshift mutations in four cancer-critical genes were identified by deep exome sequencing, including in CRTC1, BCL9, JAK1, and PTCH1. JAK1 loss-of-function mutations were validated with an overall frequency of 20% in Norwegian and British patients, and mutated tumors had up-regulation of transcriptional signatures associated with resistance to anti-PD-1 treatment. Clonality analyses revealed a high level of intra-tumor heterogeneity; however, this was not associated with disease progression. Among the MSI+ tumors, the total mutation load correlated with the number of predicted neoantigens (P = 4 × 10−5), but not with immune cell infiltration—this was dependent on the CMS class; MSI+ tumors in CMS1 were highly immunogenic compared to MSI+ tumors in CMS2-4. Both JAK1 mutations and CMS1 were favorable prognostic factors (hazard ratios 0.2 [0.05–0.9] and 0.4 [0.2–0.9], respectively, P = 0.03 and 0.02). Conclusions Multilevel genomic analyses of MSI+ colorectal cancer revealed molecular heterogeneity with clinical relevance, including tumor immunogenicity and a favorable patient outcome associated with JAK1 mutations and the transcriptomic subgroup CMS1, emphasizing the potential for prognostic stratification of this clinically important subtype. See related research highlight by Samstein and Chan 10.1186/s13073-017-0438-

Molecular alterations in endometrial cancer: implications for clinical management

Over the last decades, advances have been made in the treatment of endometrial cancer. The clinicopathological risk stratification for postoperative therapy has considerably reduced overtreatment by refining indications and introducing treatment with fewer side effects. Despite refinement in the use of postoperative radiation therapy in EC, over- and under- treatment remain a clinical problem. This may be caused by the limited accuracy of the clinicopathological risk stratification to select patients of higher risk of recurrence. The lack of reproducibility of pathologists to diagnose tumor type and grade may also limit the accuracy of the clinicopathological risk stratification. Expert gyneco-pathology review and a two-tiered grading system will lead to more accurate and reproducible diagnoses. Nonetheless, there is pressing need to understand tumor behavior and design tailored treatments to further improve risk stratification. The identification of molecular markers predictive of recurrence risk or treatment benefit beyond current clinicopathological factors would represent a major advance. The aims of this thesis were to gain insight in the molecular alterations of endometrial cancer and to identify prognostic markers in endometrial cancer to refine clinicopathological risk assessment and direct adjuvant therapy.</p

Molecular alterations in endometrial cancer: implications for clinical management

Over the last decades, advances have been made in the treatment of endometrial cancer. The clinicopathological risk stratification for postoperative therapy has considerably reduced overtreatment by refining indications and introducing treatment with fewer side effects. Despite refinement in the use of postoperative radiation therapy in EC, over- and under- treatment remain a clinical problem. This may be caused by the limited accuracy of the clinicopathological risk stratification to select patients of higher risk of recurrence. The lack of reproducibility of pathologists to diagnose tumor type and grade may also limit the accuracy of the clinicopathological risk stratification. Expert gyneco-pathology review and a two-tiered grading system will lead to more accurate and reproducible diagnoses. Nonetheless, there is pressing need to understand tumor behavior and design tailored treatments to further improve risk stratification. The identification of molecular markers predictive of recurrence risk or treatment benefit beyond current clinicopathological factors would represent a major advance. The aims of this thesis were to gain insight in the molecular alterations of endometrial cancer and to identify prognostic markers in endometrial cancer to refine clinicopathological risk assessment and direct adjuvant therapy.</p

HIGH CORRELATION OF MOLECULAR TUMOR ALTERATIONS IN ENDOMETRIAL CURRETAGE AND HYSTERECTOMY-SPECIMENS IN PATIENTS WITH ENDOMETRIAL CARCINOMA

Biological, physical and clinical aspects of cancer treatment with ionising radiatio