Cancer stem cells (CSCs) have been identified in a number of solid tumors, but not yet in rhabdomyosarcoma (RMS), the most frequently occurring soft tissue tumor in childhood. Hence, the aim of this study was to identify and characterize a CSC population in RMS using a functional approach. We found that embryonal rhabdomyosarcoma (eRMS) cell lines can form rhabdomyosarcoma spheres (short rhabdospheres) in stem cell medium containing defined growth factors over several passages. Using an orthotopic xenograft model, we demonstrate that a 100 fold less sphere cells result in faster tumor growth compared to the adherent population suggesting that CSCs were enriched in the sphere population. Furthermore, stem cell genes such as oct4, nanog, c-myc, pax3 and sox2 are significantly upregulated in rhabdospheres which can be differentiated into multiple lineages such as adipocytes, myocytes and neuronal cells. Surprisingly, gene expression profiles indicate that rhabdospheres show more similarities with neuronal than with hematopoietic or mesenchymal stem cells. Analysis of these profiles identified the known CSC marker CD133 as one of the genes upregulated in rhabdospheres, both on RNA and protein levels. CD133(+) sorted cells were subsequently shown to be more tumorigenic and more resistant to commonly used chemotherapeutics. Using a tissue microarray (TMA) of eRMS patients, we found that high expression of CD133 correlates with poor overall survival. Hence, CD133 could be a prognostic marker for eRMS. These experiments indicate that a CD133(+) CSC population can be enriched from eRMS which might help to develop novel targeted therapies against this pediatric tumor.

Next-generation sequencing technologies can be used to analyse genetically heterogeneous samples at unprecedented detail. The high coverage achievable with these methods enables the detection of many low-frequency variants. However, sequencing errors complicate the analysis of mixed populations and result in inflated estimates of genetic diversity. We developed a probabilistic Bayesian approach to minimize the effect of errors on the detection of minority variants. We applied it to pyrosequencing data obtained from a 1.5-kb-fragment of the HIV-1 gag/pol gene in two control and two clinical samples. The effect of PCR amplification was analysed. Error correction resulted in a two- and five-fold decrease of the pyrosequencing base substitution rate, from 0.05% to 0.03% and from 0.25% to 0.05% in the non-PCR and PCR-amplified samples, respectively. We were able to detect viral clones as rare as 0.1% with perfect sequence reconstruction. Probabilistic haplotype inference outperforms the counting-based calling method in both precision and recall. Genetic diversity observed within and between two clinical samples resulted in various patterns of phenotypic drug resistance and suggests a close epidemiological link. We conclude that pyrosequencing can be used to investigate genetically diverse samples with high accuracy if technical errors are properly treated.

The von Hippel-Lindau (VHL) tumor suppressor gene is mutated as an early event in almost all cases of clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC), the most frequent form of kidney cancer. In this review we discuss recent advances in understanding how dysregulation of the many hypoxia-inducible factor α-dependent and -independent functions of the VHL tumor suppressor protein (pVHL) can contribute to tumor initiation and progression. Recent evidence showing extensive inter- and intratumoral genetic diversity has given rise to the idea that ccRCC should actually be considered as a series of molecularly related, yet distinct, diseases defined by the pattern of combinatorial genetic alterations present within the cells of the tumor. We highlight the range of genetic and epigenetic alterations that recur in ccRCC and discuss the mechanisms through which these events appear to function cooperatively with a loss of pVHL function in tumorigenesis.

Cancer has long been understood as a somatic evolutionary process, but many details of tumor progression remain elusive. Here, we present BitPhylogenyBitPhylogeny, a probabilistic framework to reconstruct intra-tumor evolutionary pathways. Using a full Bayesian approach, we jointly estimate the number and composition of clones in the sample as well as the most likely tree connecting them. We validate our approach in the controlled setting of a simulation study and compare it against several competing methods. In two case studies, we demonstrate how BitPhylogeny BitPhylogeny reconstructs tumor phylogenies from methylation patterns in colon cancer and from single-cell exomes in myeloproliferative neoplasm.

CCNE1 is frequently amplified in high grade serous ovarian cancer and may serve as a target for ovarian cancer treatment. URI is closely related to CCNE1 at the 19q12 amplicon and may also contribute to the oncogenic effect. Our objective was to investigate the relevance of CCNE1 and URI gene amplification and protein expression in different histological subtypes of epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC).

HIV latency is a major obstacle to curing infection. Current strategies to eradicate HIV aim at increasing transcription of the latent provirus. In the present study we observed that latently infected CD4+ T cells from HIV-infected individuals failed to produce viral particles upon ex vivo exposure to SAHA (vorinostat), despite effective inhibition of histone deacetylases. To identify steps that were not susceptible to the action of SAHA or other latency reverting agents, we used a primary CD4+ T cell model, joint host and viral RNA sequencing, and a viral-encoded reporter. This model served to investigate the characteristics of latently infected cells, the dynamics of HIV latency, and the process of reactivation induced by various stimuli. During latency, we observed persistence of viral transcripts but only limited viral translation. Similarly, the reactivating agents SAHA and disulfiram successfully increased viral transcription, but failed to effectively enhance viral translation, mirroring the ex vivo data. This study highlights the importance of post-transcriptional blocks as one mechanism leading to HIV latency that needs to be relieved in order to purge the viral reservoir.

Salmonella Typhimurium (S. Tm) is a leading cause of diarrhea. The disease is triggered by pathogen invasion into the gut epithelium. Invasion is attributed to the SPI-1 type 3 secretion system (T1). T1 injects effector proteins into epithelial cells and thereby elicits rearrangements of the host cellular actin cytoskeleton and pathogen invasion. The T1 effector proteins SopE, SopB, SopE2 and SipA are contributing to this. However, the host cell factors contributing to invasion are still not completely understood. To address this question comprehensively, we used Hela tissue culture cells, a genome-wide siRNA library, a modified gentamicin protection assay and S. TmSipA, a sopBsopE2sopE mutant which strongly relies on the T1 effector protein SipA to invade host cells. We found that S. TmSipA invasion does not elicit membrane ruffles, nor promote the entry of non-invasive bacteria "in trans". However, SipA-mediated infection involved the SPIRE family of actin nucleators, besides well-established host cell factors (WRC, ARP2/3, RhoGTPases, COPI). Stage-specific follow-up assays and knockout fibroblasts indicated that SPIRE1 and SPIRE2 are involved in different steps of the S. Tm infection process. Whereas SPIRE1 interferes with bacterial binding, SPIRE2 influences intracellular replication of S. Tm. Hence, these two proteins might fulfill non-redundant functions in the pathogen-host interaction. The lack of co-localization hints to a short, direct interaction between S. Tm and SPIRE proteins or to an indirect effect.

A number of treatments targeting VEGF or mTOR pathways have been approved for metastatic clear cell Renal Cell Carcinoma (ccRCC), but the majority of patients show disease progression after first line therapy with a very low rate of complete or long-term responders. It has been shown that miRs may play a role in prediction of treatment response in various cancer types. The aim of our study was to identify a miR signature predictive for RCC patients' response to antiangiogenic tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) treatment in the first line therapy. Sequencing of 40 paired normal/tumor formalin fixed and paraffin embedded ccRCC tissues revealed separate clustering via unsupervised dendrograms. With supervised analysis, the strongest differential expression was obtained with miR-99b-5p, which was significantly lower in patients with short progression free survival (<8 months) and TKI non-responders (progressive disease patients according to RECIST) (p<0.0001, each). Validation using RTqPCR and a second patient cohort compiled from three different hospitals (n=65) showed higher expression of miR-99b-5p in complete responders, but this trend did not reach statistical significance. It is concluded that low miR-99b-5p expression analyzed with sequencing methodology may correlate with tumor progression in TKI-treated ccRCC patients.

Clear cell Renal Cell Carcinoma (ccRCC) formation is connected to functional loss of the von Hippel-Lindau (VHL) gene. Recent data identified its gene product, pVHL, as a multifunctional adaptor protein which interacts with HIFα subunits but also with the tumor suppressor p53. p53 is hardly expressed and rarely mutated in most ccRCC. We showed that low and absent p53 expression correlated with the severity of VHL mutations in 262 analyzed ccRCC tissues. In contrast to nonsense and frameshift mutations which abrogate virtually all pVHL functions, missense mutations may rather influence one or few functions. Therefore, we focused on four VHL missense mutations, which affect the overlapping pVHL binding sites of p53 and Elongin C, by investigating their impact on HIFα degradation, p53 expression and signaling, as well as on cellular behavior using ccRCC cell lines and tissues. TP53 mRNA and its effector targets p21, Bax and Noxa, were altered both in engineered cell lines and in tumor tissues which carried the same missense mutations. Two of these mutations were not able to degrade HIFα whereas the remaining two mutations led to HIFα downregulation, suggesting the latter are p53 binding site-specific. The selected VHL missense mutations further enhanced tumor cell survival, but had no effects on cell proliferation. Whereas Sunitinib was able to efficiently reduce cell proliferation, Camptothecin was additionally able to increase apoptotic activity of the tumor cells. It is concluded that systematic characterization of the VHL mutation status may help optimizing targeted therapy for patients with metastatic ccRCC.

Annotation and interpretation of DNA aberrations identified through next-generation sequencing is becoming an increasingly important task. Even more so in the context of data analysis pipelines for medical applications, where genomic aberrations are associated with phenotypic and clinical features. Here we describe a workflow to identify potential gene targets in aberrated genes or pathways and their corresponding drugs. To this end, we provide the R/Bioconductor package rDGIdb, an R wrapper to query the drug-gene interaction database (DGIdb). DGIdb accumulates drug-gene interaction data from 15 different resources and allows filtering on different levels. The rDGIdb package makes these resources and tools available to R users. Moreover, rDGIdb queries can be automated through incorporation of the rDGIdb package into NGS sequencing pipelines.

Endometrioid adenocarcinoma of the uterus and ovarian endometrioid carcinoma share many morphological and molecular features. Differentiation between simultaneous primary carcinomas and ovarian metastases of an endometrial cancer may be very challenging but is essential for prognostic and therapeutic considerations.

Type II endometrial carcinomas are a highly aggressive group of tumour subtypes that are frequently associated with inactivation of the TP53 tumour suppressor gene. We show that mice with endometrium-specific deletion of Trp53 initially exhibited histological changes that are identical to known precursor lesions of type II endometrial carcinomas in humans and later developed carcinomas representing all type II subtypes. The mTORC1 signalling pathway was frequently activated in these precursor lesions and tumours, suggesting a genetic cooperation between this pathway and Trp53 deficiency in tumour initiation. Consistent with this idea, analyses of 521 human endometrial carcinomas identified frequent mTORC1 pathway activation in type I as well as type II endometrial carcinoma subtypes. mTORC1 pathway activation and p53 expression or mutation status each independently predicted poor patient survival. We suggest that molecular alterations in p53 and the mTORC1 pathway play different roles in the initiation of the different endometrial cancer subtypes, but that combined p53 inactivation and mTORC1 pathway activation are unifying pathogenic features among histologically diverse subtypes of late stage aggressive endometrial tumours.

Recent advancements of sequencing technology have opened up unprecedented opportunities in many application areas. Virus samples can now be sequenced efficiently with very deep coverage to infer the genetic diversity of the underlying virus populations. Several sequencing platforms with different underlying technologies and performance characteristics are available for viral diversity studies. Here, we investigate how the differences between two common platforms provided by 454/Roche and Illumina affect viral diversity estimation and the reconstruction of viral haplotypes. Using a mixture of ten HIV clones sequenced with both platforms and additional simulation experiments, we assessed the trade-off between sequencing coverage, read length, and error rate. For fixed costs, short Illumina reads can be generated at higher coverage and allow for detecting variants at lower frequencies. They can also be sufficient to assess the diversity of the sample if sequences are dissimilar enough, but, in general, assembly of full-length haplotypes is feasible only with the longer 454/Roche reads. The quantitative comparison highlights the advantages and disadvantages of both platforms and provides guidance for the design of viral diversity studies.

Next-generation sequencing (NGS) is a valuable tool for the detection and quantification of HIV-1 variants in vivo. However, these technologies require detailed characterization and control of artificially induced errors to be applicable for accurate haplotype reconstruction. To investigate the occurrence of substitutions, insertions, and deletions at the individual steps of RT-PCR and NGS, 454 pyrosequencing was performed on amplified and non-amplified HIV-1 genomes. Artificial recombination was explored by mixing five different HIV-1 clonal strains (5-virus-mix) and applying different RT-PCR conditions followed by 454 pyrosequencing. Error rates ranged from 0.04-0.66% and were similar in amplified and non-amplified samples. Discrepancies were observed between forward and reverse reads, indicating that most errors were introduced during the pyrosequencing step. Using the 5-virus-mix, non-optimized, standard RT-PCR conditions introduced artificial recombinants in a fraction of at least 30% of the reads that subsequently led to an underestimation of true haplotype frequencies. We minimized the fraction of recombinants down to 0.9-2.6% by optimized, artifact-reducing RT-PCR conditions. This approach enabled correct haplotype reconstruction and frequency estimations consistent with reference data obtained by single genome amplification. RT-PCR conditions are crucial for correct frequency estimation and analysis of haplotypes in heterogeneous virus populations. We developed an RT-PCR procedure to generate NGS data useful for reliable haplotype reconstruction and quantification.

The combinations of genetic alterations that cooperate with von Hippel-Lindau (VHL) mutation to cause clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC) remain poorly understood. We show that the TP53 tumour suppressor gene is mutated in approximately 9% of human ccRCCs. Combined deletion of Vhl and Trp53 in primary mouse embryo fibroblasts causes proliferative dysregulation and high rates of aneuploidy. Deletion of these genes in the epithelium of the kidney induces the formation of simple cysts, atypical cysts and neoplasms, and deletion in the epithelia of the genital urinary tract leads to dysplasia and tumour formation. Kidney cysts display a reduced frequency of primary cilia and atypical cysts and neoplasms exhibit a pro-proliferative signature including activation of mTORC1 and high expression of Myc, mimicking several cellular and molecular alterations seen in human ccRCC and its precursor lesions. As the majority of ccRCC is associated with functional inactivation of VHL, our findings suggest that for a subset of ccRCC, loss of p53 function represents a critical event in tumour development.

To evaluate the protein expression of connexin 43 (Cx43) in primary urothelial bladder cancer and test its association with the histopathological characteristics and clinical outcome.

MiRNAs and other small noncoding RNAs (sncRNAs) are key players in post-transcriptional gene regulation. HIV-1 derived small noncoding RNAs (sncRNAs) have been described in HIV-1 infected cells, but their biological functions still remain to be elucidated. Here, we approached the question whether viral sncRNAs may play a role in the RNA interference (RNAi) pathway or whether viral mRNAs are targeted by cellular miRNAs in human monocyte derived macrophages (MDM).

Intratumoral hypoxia plays an important role with regard to tumor biology and susceptibility to radio- and chemotherapy. For further investigation of hypoxia-related changes, areas of certain hypoxia must be reliably detected within cancer tissues. Pimonidazole, a 2-nitroimindazole, accumulates in hypoxic tissue and can be easily visualized using immunohistochemistry.

HIV-1 infects CD4+ T cells and completes its replication cycle in approximately 24 hours. We employed repeated measurements in a standardized cell system and rigorous mathematical modeling to characterize the emergence of the viral replication intermediates and their impact on the cellular transcriptional response with high temporal resolution. We observed 7,991 (73%) of the 10,958 expressed genes to be modulated in concordance with key steps of viral replication. Fifty-two percent of the overall variability in the host transcriptome was explained by linear regression on the viral life cycle. This profound perturbation of cellular physiology was investigated in the light of several regulatory mechanisms, including transcription factors, miRNAs, host-pathogen interaction, and proviral integration. Key features were validated in primary CD4+ T cells, and with viral constructs using alternative entry strategies. We propose a model of early massive cellular shutdown and progressive upregulation of the cellular machinery to complete the viral life cycle.

Decreased β cell mass and function are hallmarks of type 2 diabetes. Here we identified, through a siRNA screen, beta site amyloid precursor protein cleaving enzyme 2 (Bace2) as the sheddase of the proproliferative plasma membrane protein Tmem27 in murine and human β cells. Mice with functionally inactive Bace2 and insulin-resistant mice treated with a newly identified Bace2 inhibitor both display augmented β cell mass and improved control of glucose homeostasis due to increased insulin levels. These results implicate Bace2 in the control of β cell maintenance and provide a rational strategy to inhibit this protease for the expansion of functional pancreatic β cell mass.