It is widely accepted that somatic driver mutations such as mutations of TP53 occur at an early event of cancer then relatively high frequency of the mutation should be observed. In the current study, we indeed BMS-907351 abmole bioscience observed at least 20% of tumor variant frequencies for TP53. Therefore, we presumably did not overlook driver mutations of TP53 by the exome sequencing. The low numbers of somatic mutations and CNV segments observed in ST1 likely reflect a functionally intact p53 pathway. ST2 was enriched for TP53 mutations, and genome-wide copy number profiles were similar to those of Type II tumors. In contrast, TP53 was nonmutated in ST1 and exhibited a normal karyotype similar to that of Type I tumors as proposed in a previous review. However, we did not detect mutations in genes encoding components of the RAS signaling pathway in ST1. In the largest dataset from TCGA, 15 of 316 samples from patients with HGSOC harbored nonmutated TP53.
When we searched for TP53 deletions, MDM2 amplification, or p53 target-gene mutations in the 15 samples. Hierarchical clustering using 45 overlapping genes among the 70 differentially expressed genes assigned TCGA-25-1328 to ST1. These results imply that ST1 is a novel HGSOC subtype based on mutation and CNV profiles. To further characterize the functional characteristics of ST1 and ST2, we compared their gene expression profiles. Using a significance threshold, we identified 70 genes that were homogeneously expressed in the ST1 microarray and heterogeneously expressed in the ST2 microarray. The heterogenous gene expression of ST2 may indicate diversification of molecular subtypes as secondary events as proposed in the review cited above, and homogeneous gene expression of ST1 may reflect an early event of oncogenesis before chromatin instability occurs. GO analysis identified 18 GO groups that share highly similar biological terms, and two groups were significantly enriched for genes involved in mitosis and those that encode DNA helicases. Defects in mitosis lead to abnormal chromosome numbers that is associated with oncogenesis. Two mitotic genes encoding the kinases NEK1 and NEK9 were highly expressed in ST1, and upregulation of these kinases is associated with genomic stability and tumorigenesis.
Moreover, other mitotic genes were highly expressed in ST2, and aberrant activation of the expression of these genes is associated with oncogenesis. DNA helicases maintain genome stability through DNA repair, recombination, and replication. The DNA helicases, BML and RECQL4, are inactivated in cancer prone genetic disorders such as Bloom and Rothmund-Thomson syndromes. Upregulation of DNA helicase expression commonly occurs in several cancers. Elevated expression of the DNA helicase genes BLM, PIF1, and RECQL4 which is generally observed in cancers may explain a recovery function from chromatin instability in ST2. In contrast, decreased expression of genes encoding DNA helicases that characterized ST1 indicates that chromatin instability does not occur in ST1.