Publications by authors named "W Chatila"
Purpose: Mutational data from multiple solid and liquid biospecimens of a single patient are often integrated to track cancer evolution. However, there is no accepted framework to resolve if individual samples from the same individual share variants due to common identity versus coincidence.
Experimental Design: Utilizing 8,000 patient tumors from The Cancer Genome Atlas across 33 cancer types, we estimated the background rates of co-occurrence of mutations between discrete pairs of samples across cancers and by cancer type.
Article Synopsis
- Researchers are merging unstructured patient data with structured health records to create the MSK-CHORD dataset, consisting of varied cancer types from nearly 25,000 patients at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.
- This dataset allows for in-depth analysis of cancer outcomes using advanced techniques like natural language processing, revealing new relationships that smaller datasets may not show.
- Using MSK-CHORD for machine learning models, findings suggest that incorporating features from these unstructured texts can better predict patient survival than relying solely on genomic data or cancer staging.
Article Synopsis
- Gallbladder cancer (GBC) is a highly lethal cancer with low overall incidence but higher prevalence in specific regions like Chile; this study compares clinical and molecular features of GBC patients from Chile and the US.
- The study involved 260 patients, revealing a significantly higher rate of gallstones in the Chilean cohort and similar genetic alteration prevalence between the two groups, with overall alterations found in 14% of patients.
- Patients with GBC having genetic alterations showed better overall survival rates, suggesting they may benefit from targeted therapies, highlighting the necessity for broader genomic analysis in regions with high GBC rates.
Brain metastasis, a serious complication of cancer, hinges on the initial survival, microenvironment adaptation, and outgrowth of disseminated cancer cells. To understand the early stages of brain colonization, we investigated two prevalent sources of cerebral relapse, triple-negative (TNBC) and HER2+ (HER2BC) breast cancers. Using mouse models and human tissue samples, we found that these tumor types colonize the brain, with a preference for distinctive tumor architectures, stromal interfaces, and autocrine programs.
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- The clinical development of farnesyltransferase inhibitors (FTIs) for HRAS-mutant tumors shows varied responses due to co-occurring mutations and their impact on sensitivity to FTIs.
- Targeted sequencing revealed that HRAS-mutant cancers frequently exhibit mutations in the MAPK, PI3K, or RTK pathways, more so than KRAS and NRAS mutants, with specific alterations like BRAF, NF1, PTEN, and PIK3CA being prevalent.
- Research indicated that while certain comutations confer resistance to FTIs, combining FTIs with MEK inhibitors may enhance sensitivity in HRAS-mutant tumors, presenting a potential treatment strategy.