Tumour infiltrating lymphocytes and survival after adjuvant chemotherapy in patients with gastric cancer: post-hoc analysis of the CLASSIC trial.

Background: Only a subset of gastric cancer (GC) patients with stage II-III benefits from chemotherapy after surgery. Tumour infiltrating lymphocytes per area (TIL density) has been suggested as a potential predictive biomarker of chemotherapy benefit.

Methods: We quantified TIL density in digital images of haematoxylin-eosin (HE) stained tissue using deep learning in 307 GC patients of the Yonsei Cancer Center (YCC) (193 surgery+adjuvant chemotherapy [S + C], 114 surgery alone [S]) and 629 CLASSIC trial GC patients (325 S + C and 304 S).

Ulcerated melanoma: Systems biology evidence of inflammatory imbalance towards pro-tumourigenicity.

Microscopic ulceration is an independent predictor of melanoma death. Here, we used systems biology to query the role of host and tumour-specific processes in defining the phenotype. Albumin level as a measure of systemic inflammation was predictive of fewer tumour-infiltrating lymphocytes and poorer survival in the Leeds Melanoma Cohort.

High-Resolution Copy Number Patterns From Clinically Relevant FFPE Material.

Systematic tumour profiling is essential for biomarker research and clinically for assessing response to therapy. Solving the challenge of delivering informative copy number (CN) profiles from formalin-fixed paraffin embedded (FFPE) material, the only likely readily available biospecimen for most cancers, involves successful processing of small quantities of degraded DNA. To investigate the potential for analysis of such lesions, whole-genome CNVseq was applied to 300 FFPE primary tumour samples, obtained from a large-scale epidemiological study of melanoma.

β-Catenin-mediated immune evasion pathway frequently operates in primary cutaneous melanomas.

Immunotherapy prolongs survival in only a subset of melanoma patients, highlighting the need to better understand the driver tumor microenvironment. We conducted bioinformatic analyses of 703 transcriptomes to probe the immune landscape of primary cutaneous melanomas in a population-ascertained cohort. We identified and validated 6 immunologically distinct subgroups, with the largest having the lowest immune scores and the poorest survival.

Independent replication of a melanoma subtype gene signature and evaluation of its prognostic value and biological correlates in a population cohort.

Development and validation of robust molecular biomarkers has so far been limited in melanoma research. In this paper we used a large population-based cohort to replicate two published gene signatures for melanoma classification. We assessed the signatures prognostic value and explored their biological significance by correlating them with factors known to be associated with survival (vitamin D) or etiological routes (nevi, sun sensitivity and telomere length).

SPIB and BATF provide alternate determinants of IRF4 occupancy in diffuse large B-cell lymphoma linked to disease heterogeneity.

Interferon regulatory factor 4 (IRF4) is central to the transcriptional network of activated B-cell-like diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (ABC-DLBCL), an aggressive lymphoma subgroup defined by gene expression profiling. Since cofactor association modifies transcriptional regulatory input by IRF4, we assessed genome occupancy by IRF4 and endogenous cofactors in ABC-DLBCL cell lines. IRF4 partners with SPIB, PU.

Targeting human apurinic/apyrimidinic endonuclease 1 (APE1) in phosphatase and tensin homolog (PTEN) deficient melanoma cells for personalized therapy.

Phosphatase and tensin homolog (PTEN) loss is associated with genomic instability. APE1 is a key player in DNA base excision repair (BER) and an emerging drug target in cancer. We have developed small molecule inhibitors against APE1 repair nuclease activity.