Metastasis is the main cause of treatment failure and death in cancer patients. Metastasis of tumor cells to the brain occurs frequently in individuals with breast cancer, non-small cell lung cancer, or melanoma. Despite recent advances in our understanding of the causes and in the treatment of primary tumors, the biological and molecular mechanisms underlying the metastasis of cancer cells to the brain have remained unclear. Metastasizing cancer cells interact with their microenvironment in the brain to establish metastases. We have now developed mouse models of brain metastasis based on intracardiac injection of human breast cancer or melanoma cell lines, and we have performed RNA sequencing analysis to identify genes in mouse brain tissue and the human cancer cells whose expression is associated specifically with metastasis. We found that the expressions of the mouse genes

Protein tyrosine phosphatases that act in different cellular pathways are described most commonly as tumor suppressors, but also as oncogenes. Their role has previously been described in colorectal cancer, as well as in gastric, breast, thyroid, prostate, ovarian, pancreatic, glioma, liver, leukemia and many other cancers. In a previous study, we have described protein tyrosine phosphatase receptor type T, M, Z1 and Q genes (PTPRT, PTPRM, PTPRZ1 and PTPRQ) hypermethylated in sporadic colorectal cancer. Thus, in this study, we examined the relation of unbalanced chromosomal alterations within regions covering these four protein tyrosine phosphatase genes with this cancer. One hundred and two cancer tissues were molecularly characterized, including analysis of the BRAF and K-ras mutations and methylator phenotype. The analysis of chromosomal aberrations was performed using Comparative Genomic Hybridization. We observed amplification of three regions containing genes coding for PTPs, such as PTPRZ1 (7q31.3, amplified in 23.5% of cases), PTPRQ (12q21.2, amplified in 5.9% of cases), PTPRT (20q12, amplified in 29.4% of cases), along with deletions in the region of PTPRM (18p11.2, deleted in 21.6% of cases). These data may suggest that in sporadic colorectal cancer PTPRZ1, PTPRT, PTPRQ probably act as oncogenes, while PTPRM acts as a tumor suppressor gene. Our study also revealed that gains on chromosome 20q12 and losses on chromosome 18p11.2 are connected with the absence of the BRAF mutation and the conventional adenocarcinoma pathway.

Liposarcoma is the most common soft tissue sarcoma, but little is known about the genomic basis of this disease. Given the low cell content of this tumor type, we utilized flow cytometry to isolate the diploid normal and aneuploid tumor populations from a well-differentiated liposarcoma prior to array comparative genomic hybridization and whole genome sequencing. This work revealed massive highly focal amplifications throughout the aneuploid tumor genome including MDM2, a gene that has previously been found to be amplified in well-differentiated liposarcoma. Structural analysis revealed massive rearrangement of chromosome 12 and 11 gene fusions, some of which may be part of double minute chromosomes commonly present in well-differentiated liposarcoma. We identified a hotspot of genomic instability localized to a region of chromosome 12 that includes a highly conserved, putative L1 retrotransposon element, LOC100507498 which resides within a gene cluster (NAV3, SYT1, PAWR) where 6 of the 11 fusion events occurred. Interestingly, a potential gene fusion was also identified in amplified DDR2, which is a potential therapeutic target of kinase inhibitors such as dastinib, that are not routinely used in the treatment of patients with liposarcoma. Furthermore, 7 somatic, damaging single nucleotide variants have also been identified, including D125N in the PTPRQ protein. In conclusion, this work is the first to report the entire genome of a well-differentiated liposarcoma with novel chromosomal rearrangements associated with amplification of therapeutically targetable genes such as MDM2 and DDR2.