Publications by authors named "Bowcock A"

Rare mutations in CARD14 promote psoriasis by inducing CARD14-BCL10-MALT1 complexes that activate NF-κB and MAP kinases. Here, the downstream signalling mechanism of the highly penetrant CARD14E138A alteration is described. In addition to BCL10 and MALT1, CARD14E138A associated with several proteins important in innate immune signalling.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: People living with HIV (PLWH) have substantially increased incidence of anal precancer and cancer. There are very little data regarding genomic disturbances in anal precancers among PLWH. In this study, specific chromosomal variants were identified in anal squamous intraepithelial lesions.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

By inhibition of JAK-STAT signaling, SOCS1 acts as a master regulator of the cytokine response across numerous tissue types and cytokine pathways. Haploinsufficiency of SOCS1 has recently emerged as a monogenic immunodysregulatory disease with marked clinical variability. Here, we describe a patient with severe dermatitis, recurrent skin infections, and psoriatic arthritis that harbors a novel heterozygous mutation in SOCS1.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Uveal melanoma (UM) is an uncommon but highly aggressive ocular malignancy. Poor overall survival is associated with deleterious BAP1 alterations, which frequently occur with monosomy 3 (LOH3) and a characteristic gene expression profile. Tumor DNA from a cohort of 100 UM patients from Moorfields Biobank (UK) that had undergone enucleation were sequenced for known UM driver genes (BAP1, SF3B1, EIF1AX, GNAQ, and GNA11).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Pleural mesothelioma is an aggressive malignancy with limited effective therapies. In order to identify therapeutic targets, we integrated SNP genotyping, sequencing and transcriptomics from tumours and low-passage patient-derived cells. Previously unrecognised deletions of SUFU locus (10q24.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Scientists are studying a special type of DNA called ctDNA to learn more about cancer in Africa.
  • They looked at blood samples from 15 patients with breast cancer at the time they were diagnosed.
  • Most of the patients showed changes in their DNA that drive the cancer, which helps researchers understand the disease better.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

CARD14-associated papulosquamous eruption (CAPE) is a proposed term that encompasses features ranging from psoriasis to pityriasis rubra pilaris (PRP) in association with CARD14 mutations. The early onset of the disease, prominent facial involvement, family history of an autosomal dominant trait, and poor response to conventional treatment are characteristics of CAPE that distinguish it from classical psoriasis and PRP. We describe the clinical features, family history, and response to therapy in three unrelated children with CAPE and compare these characteristics with those of previously described pediatric patients.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Dermatologists stand at the gateway of individualization of classification, treatment, and outcomes of acral melanoma patients. The acral melanoma genetic landscape differs in vital ways from that of other cutaneous melanomas. These differences have important implications in understanding pathogenesis, treatment, and prognosis.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

(1) Background: Understanding the function of circular RNAs (circRNAs), a class of noncoding RNA, in psoriatic skin can provide important insights into the complex regulation of genes contributing to the pathogenesis of psoriasis. (2) Methods: A novel method was applied to RNA-seq datasets from 93 skin biopsy samples to comprehensively identify circRNAs of all types, i.e.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • BAP1 is an enzyme that relies on the protein ASXL2 for its deubiquitinase activity, and mutations can disrupt this function by affecting important domains of BAP1.
  • Research showed that the interaction between BAP1 and ASXL2 is direct and stable, significantly enhancing BAP1's activity when they form a complex.
  • Understanding these interactions opens up possibilities for new therapies aimed at restoring BAP1's function in cancers with specific mutations.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

To investigate how the psoriasis-associated mutation induces skin inflammation, a knock-in mouse strain was generated that allows tamoxifen-induced expression of the homologous mutation from the endogenous mouse locus. Heterozygous expression of CARD14 rapidly induced skin acanthosis, immune cell infiltration and expression of psoriasis-associated pro-inflammatory genes. Homozygous expression of CARD14 induced more extensive skin inflammation and a severe systemic disease involving infiltration of myeloid cells in multiple organs, temperature reduction, weight loss and organ failure.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Endothelial cells are a primary site of leukocyte recruitment during inflammation. An increase in tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNFa) levels as a result of infection or some autoimmune diseases can trigger this process. Several autoimmune diseases are now treated with TNFa inhibitors.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

In this issue of , Wang and colleagues identify a large number of regulatory sites within the genomes of non-small cell lung cancers with a global scan for open chromatin (assaying for transposase-accessible chromatin with sequencing). They show that this type of profiling might substitute RNA sequencing in classifying lung cancer samples and in making predictions about prognosis. They also show experimentally that genome editing of some regulatory sites upregulates the expression of and , which are required for detoxification of carcinogens and whose low expression levels are associated with lung cancer risk.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Psoriasis (PS) is a common inflammatory and incurable skin disease affecting 2-3% of the human population. Although genome-wide association studies implicate more than 60 loci, the full complement of genetic factors leading to disease is not known. Rare, highly penetrant, gain-of-function, dominantly acting mutations within the human caspase recruitment domain family, member 14 (CARD14) gene lead to the development of PS and psoriatic arthritis (PSA) (a familial p.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Purpose: Uveal melanoma is a primary malignancy of the eye with oncogenic mutations in , and additional mutations in (usually associated with LOH of Chr 3), , or . There are other characteristic chromosomal alterations, but their significance is not clear.

Experimental Design: To investigate genes driving chromosomal alterations, we integrated copy number, transcriptome, and mutation data from three cohorts and followed up key findings.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Familial aggregation is a significant risk factor for the development of thyroid cancer and familial non-medullary thyroid cancer (FNMTC) accounts for 5-7% of all NMTC. Whole exome sequencing analysis in the family affected by FNMTC with oncocytic features where our group previously identified a predisposing locus on chromosome 19p13.2, revealed a novel heterozygous mutation (c.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Heterozygous mutations in caspase recruitment domain family member 14 gene (CARD14) have been shown to be associated with psoriasis and familial pityriasis rubra pilaris (PRP). Many subjects with CARD14 mutations display features of both disorders, which can result in diagnostic uncertainty. In addition, these eruptions are often recalcitrant to conventional psoriasis therapies such as methotrexate, oral retinoids, and tumor necrosis factor-α inhibitors.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Cancer develops through genomic changes influenced by natural selection, but the timing of changes associated with metastasis is unclear.
  • Uveal melanoma (UM), the most common eye cancer, often leads to metastatic death linked to BAP1 mutations and is ideal for studying how tumors evolve.
  • Analysis of 151 UM samples revealed that BAP1 mutations occur early in tumor development, suggesting that a tumor’s potential to spread is determined early, explaining why treatment advancements haven't improved survival rates.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Deleterious mutations of the ubiquitin carboxy-terminal hydrolase BAP1 found in cancers are predicted to encode inactive truncated proteins, suggesting that loss of enzyme function is a primary tumorigenic mechanism. However, many tumors exhibit missense mutations or in-frame deletions or insertions, often outside the functionally critical UCH domain in this tumor suppressor protein. Thus, precisely how these mutations inactivate BAP1 is unknown.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

This study aimed to molecularly characterise colorectal pulmonary metastases (PM) and investigate whether their molecular profiles were concordant with those of the primary tumour. Clinical data and archival formalin fixed paraffin embedded tissue samples were retrospectively collected from patients who underwent ≥ 1 pulmonary metastasectomies for colorectal cancer between 1997-2012. Primary tumour and metastatic samples were analysed using a targeted capture sequencing panel of 46 cancer-associated genes.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The investigation of biological systems involving all organs of the body including the skin is in era of big data. This requires heavy-duty computational tools, and novel statistical methods. Microarrays have allowed the interrogation of thousands of common genetic markers in thousands of individuals from the same population (termed genome wide association studies or GWAS) to reveal common variation associated with disease or phenotype.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: We previously identified PRAME as a biomarker for metastatic risk in Class 1 uveal melanomas. In this study, we sought to define a threshold value for positive PRAME expression (PRAME+) in a large dataset, identify factors associated with PRAME expression, evaluate the prognostic value of PRAME in Class 2 uveal melanomas, and determine whether PRAME expression is associated with aberrant hypomethylation of the PRAME promoter.

Results: Among 678 samples analyzed by qPCR, 498 (73.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Importance: Frequent mutations have been described in the following 5 genes in uveal melanoma (UM): BAP1, EIF1AX, GNA11, GNAQ, and SF3B1. Understanding the prognostic significance of these mutations could facilitate their use in precision medicine.

Objective: To determine the associations between driver mutations, gene expression profile (GEP) classification, clinicopathologic features, and patient outcomes in UM.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF