Genome-wide cell-free DNA mutational integration enables ultra-sensitive cancer monitoring.

In many areas of oncology, we lack sensitive tools to track low-burden disease. Although cell-free DNA (cfDNA) shows promise in detecting cancer mutations, we found that the combination of low tumor fraction (TF) and limited number of DNA fragments restricts low-disease-burden monitoring through the prevailing deep targeted sequencing paradigm. We reasoned that breadth may supplant depth of sequencing to overcome the barrier of cfDNA abundance.

Somatic mutations and cell identity linked by Genotyping of Transcriptomes.

Defining the transcriptomic identity of malignant cells is challenging in the absence of surface markers that distinguish cancer clones from one another, or from admixed non-neoplastic cells. To address this challenge, here we developed Genotyping of Transcriptomes (GoT), a method to integrate genotyping with high-throughput droplet-based single-cell RNA sequencing. We apply GoT to profile 38,290 CD34 cells from patients with CALR-mutated myeloproliferative neoplasms to study how somatic mutations corrupt the complex process of human haematopoiesis.

Epigenetic evolution and lineage histories of chronic lymphocytic leukaemia.

Genetic and epigenetic intra-tumoral heterogeneity cooperate to shape the evolutionary course of cancer. Chronic lymphocytic leukaemia (CLL) is a highly informative model for cancer evolution as it undergoes substantial genetic diversification and evolution after therapy. The CLL epigenome is also an important disease-defining feature, and growing populations of cells in CLL diversify by stochastic changes in DNA methylation known as epimutations.

Reversible histone glycation is associated with disease-related changes in chromatin architecture.

Cellular proteins continuously undergo non-enzymatic covalent modifications (NECMs) that accumulate under normal physiological conditions and are stimulated by changes in the cellular microenvironment. Glycation, the hallmark of diabetes, is a prevalent NECM associated with an array of pathologies. Histone proteins are particularly susceptible to NECMs due to their long half-lives and nucleophilic disordered tails that undergo extensive regulatory modifications; however, histone NECMs remain poorly understood.