LCOR mediates interferon-independent tumor immunogenicity and responsiveness to immune-checkpoint blockade in triple-negative breast cancer.

Ligand-dependent corepressor (LCOR) mediates normal and malignant breast stem cell differentiation. Cancer stem cells (CSCs) generate phenotypic heterogeneity and drive therapy resistance, yet their role in immunotherapy is poorly understood. Here we show that immune-checkpoint blockade (ICB) therapy selects for LCOR CSCs with reduced antigen processing/presentation machinery (APM) driving immune escape and ICB resistance in triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC).

Androgenic activation, impairment of the monoaminergic system and altered behavior in zebrafish larvae exposed to environmental concentrations of fenitrothion.

Fenitrothion is an organophosphorus insecticide usually found in aquatic ecosystems at concentrations in the range of low ng/L. In this manuscript we show that 24 h exposure to environmental concentrations of fenitrothion, from ng/L to low μg/L, altered basal locomotor activity, visual-motor response and acoustic/vibrational escape response of zebrafish larvae. Furthermore, fenitrothion and expression of gap43a, gfap, atp2b1a, and mbp exhibited a significant non-monotonic concentration-response relationship.

Dual Inhibitors of PARPs and ROCKs.

Recent network and system biology analyses suggest that most complex diseases are regulated by robust and highly interconnected pathways that could be better modulated by small molecules binding to multiple biological targets. These pieces of evidence recently led to devote efforts on identifying single chemical entities that bind to two different disease-relevant targets. Here, we first predicted in silico and later confirmed in vitro that UPF 1069, a known bioactive poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase-1/2 (PARP1/2) molecule, and hydroxyfasudil, a known bioactive Rho-associated protein kinase-1/2 (ROCK1/2) molecule, have low-micromolar cross-affinity for ROCK1/2 and PARP1/2, respectively.

Manic Fringe deficiency imposes Jagged1 addiction to intestinal tumor cells.

Delta ligands regulate Notch signaling in normal intestinal stem cells, while Jagged1 activates Notch in intestinal adenomas carrying active β-catenin. We used the Apc mouse model, tumor spheroid cultures, and patient-derived orthoxenografts to address this divergent ligand-dependent Notch function and its implication in disease. We found that intestinal-specific Jag1 deletion or antibody targeting Jag1 prevents tumor initiation in mice.

A DNA methylation map of human cancer at single base-pair resolution.

Although single base-pair resolution DNA methylation landscapes for embryonic and different somatic cell types provided important insights into epigenetic dynamics and cell-type specificity, such comprehensive profiling is incomplete across human cancer types. This prompted us to perform genome-wide DNA methylation profiling of 22 samples derived from normal tissues and associated neoplasms, including primary tumors and cancer cell lines. Unlike their invariant normal counterparts, cancer samples exhibited highly variable CpG methylation levels in a large proportion of the genome, involving progressive changes during tumor evolution.

Monitoring therapy responses at the leukemic subclone level by ultra-deep amplicon resequencing in acute myeloid leukemia.

In our individualized systems medicine program, personalized treatment options are identified and administered to chemorefractory acute myeloid leukemia (AML) patients based on exome sequencing and ex vivo drug sensitivity and resistance testing data. Here, we analyzed how clonal heterogeneity affects the responses of 13 AML patients to chemotherapy or targeted treatments using ultra-deep (average 68 000 × coverage) amplicon resequencing. Using amplicon resequencing, we identified 16 variants from 4 patients (frequency 0.

Rational design of cancer gene panels with OncoPaD.

Background: Profiling the somatic mutations of genes which may inform about tumor evolution, prognostics and treatment is becoming a standard tool in clinical oncology. Commercially available cancer gene panels rely on manually gathered cancer-related genes, in a "one-size-fits-many" solution. The design of new panels requires laborious search of literature and cancer genomics resources, with their performance on cohorts of patients difficult to estimate.

A Landscape of Pharmacogenomic Interactions in Cancer.

Systematic studies of cancer genomes have provided unprecedented insights into the molecular nature of cancer. Using this information to guide the development and application of therapies in the clinic is challenging. Here, we report how cancer-driven alterations identified in 11,289 tumors from 29 tissues (integrating somatic mutations, copy number alterations, DNA methylation, and gene expression) can be mapped onto 1,001 molecularly annotated human cancer cell lines and correlated with sensitivity to 265 drugs.

OncodriveFML: a general framework to identify coding and non-coding regions with cancer driver mutations.

Distinguishing the driver mutations from somatic mutations in a tumor genome is one of the major challenges of cancer research. This challenge is more acute and far from solved for non-coding mutations. Here we present OncodriveFML, a method designed to analyze the pattern of somatic mutations across tumors in both coding and non-coding genomic regions to identify signals of positive selection, and therefore, their involvement in tumorigenesis.

Altered oncomodules underlie chromatin regulatory factors driver mutations.

Chromatin regulatory factors (CRFs), are known to be involved in tumorigenesis in several cancer types. Nevertheless, the molecular mechanisms through which driver alterations of CRFs cause tumorigenesis remain unknown. Here, we developed a CRFs Oncomodules Discovery approach, which mines several sources of cancer genomics and perturbaomics data.

Nucleotide excision repair is impaired by binding of transcription factors to DNA.

Somatic mutations are the driving force of cancer genome evolution. The rate of somatic mutations appears to be greatly variable across the genome due to variations in chromatin organization, DNA accessibility and replication timing. However, other variables that may influence the mutation rate locally are unknown, such as a role for DNA-binding proteins, for example.

Circuits of cancer drivers revealed by convergent misregulation of transcription factor targets across tumor types.

Background: Large tumor genome sequencing projects have now uncovered a few hundred genes involved in the onset of tumorigenesis, or drivers, in some two dozen malignancies. One of the main challenges emerging from this catalog of drivers is how to make sense of their heterogeneity in most cancer types. This is key not only to understand how carcinogenesis appears and develops in these malignancies to be able to early diagnose them, but also to open up the possibility to employ therapeutic strategies targeting a driver protein to counteract the alteration of another connected driver.

Insights from Fragment Hit Binding Assays by Molecular Simulations.

Novel bioactive molecules can be rationally designed by growing and linking small fragments. Because fragments are fast and promiscuous, it is common to have contradictory hit results between different experimental screening techniques. Here, we simultaneously determine fragment binding poses, affinities, and kinetics on a focused library of 42 fragments against the serine protease factor Xa using multimillisecond molecular dynamics simulations.

In silico prescription of anticancer drugs to cohorts of 28 tumor types reveals targeting opportunities.

Large efforts dedicated to detect somatic alterations across tumor genomes/exomes are expected to produce significant improvements in precision cancer medicine. However, high inter-tumor heterogeneity is a major obstacle to developing and applying therapeutic targeted agents to treat most cancer patients. Here, we offer a comprehensive assessment of the scope of targeted therapeutic agents in a large pan-cancer cohort.

Distant polypharmacology among MLP chemical probes.

Small molecules are essential tool compounds to probe the role of proteins in biology and advance toward more efficient therapeutics. However, they are used without a complete knowledge of their selectivity across the entire proteome, at risk of confounding their effects due to unknown off-target interactions. Current state-of-the-art computational approaches to predicting the affinity profile of small molecules offer a means to anticipate potential nonobvious selectivity liabilities of chemical probes.

Linking off-target kinase pharmacology to the differential cellular effects observed among PARP inhibitors.

PARP inhibitors hold promise as a novel class of targeted anticancer drugs. However, their true mechanism of action is still not well understood following recent reports that show marked differences in cellular effects. Here, we demonstrate that three PARP drug candidates, namely, rucaparib, veliparib, and olaparib, have a clearly different in vitro affinity profile across a panel of diverse kinases selected using a computational approach that relates proteins by ligand similarity.