Genetic Analysis of Diffuse High‐Grade Astrocytomas in Infancy Defines a Novel Molecular Entity
- 18 September 2014
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Wiley in Brain Pathology
- Vol. 25 (4), 409-417
- https://doi.org/10.1111/bpa.12210
Abstract
Pediatric high‐grade gliomas are considered to be different when compared to adult high‐grade gliomas in their pathogenesis and biological behavior. Recently, common genetic alterations, including mutations in the H3F3A/ATRX/DAXX pathway, have been described in approximately 30% of the pediatric cases. However, only few cases of infant high‐grade gliomas have been analyzed so far. We investigated the molecular features of 35 infants with diffuse high‐grade astrocytomas, including 8 anaplastic astrocytomas [World Health Organization (WHO) grade III] and 27 glioblastomas (WHO grade IV) by immunohistochemistry, multiplex ligation probe‐dependent amplification (MLPA), pyrosequencing of glioma‐associated genes and molecular inversion probe (MIP) assay. MIP and MLPA analyses showed that chromosomal alterations are significantly less frequent in infants compared with high‐grade gliomas in older children and adults. We only identified H3F3A K27M in 2 of 34 cases (5.9%), with both tumors located in the posterior fossa. PDGFRA amplifications were absent, and CDKN2A loss could be observed only in two cases. Conversely, 1q gain (22.7%) and 6q loss (18.2%) were identified in a subgroup of tumors. Loss of SNORD located on chromosome 14q32 was observed in 27.3% of the infant tumors, a focal copy number change not previously described in gliomas. Our findings indicate that infant high‐grade gliomas appear to represent a distinct genetic entity suggesting a different pathogenesis and biological behavior.Keywords
This publication has 37 references indexed in Scilit:
- Altered Telomeres in Tumors with ATRX and DAXX MutationsScience, 2011
- Small nucleolar RNA signatures as biomarkers for non-small-cell lung cancerMolecular Cancer, 2010
- A Distinct Spectrum of Copy Number Aberrations in Pediatric High-Grade GliomasClinical Cancer Research, 2010
- Integrated Molecular Genetic Profiling of Pediatric High-Grade Gliomas Reveals Key Differences With the Adult DiseaseJournal of Clinical Oncology, 2010
- Brain Tumors Across the Age Spectrum: Biology, Therapy, and Late EffectsSeminars in Radiation Oncology, 2010
- Integrated Genomic Analysis Identifies Clinically Relevant Subtypes of Glioblastoma Characterized by Abnormalities in PDGFRA, IDH1, EGFR, and NF1Cancer Cell, 2010
- Implication of snoRNA U50 in human breast cancerJournal of Genetics and Genomics, 2009
- Brain tumor epidemiology: Consensus from the Brain Tumor Epidemiology ConsortiumCancer, 2008
- Assessing the significance of chromosomal aberrations in cancer: Methodology and application to gliomaProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2007
- SnoRNA U50 is a candidate tumor-suppressor gene at 6q14.3 with a mutation associated with clinically significant prostate cancerHuman Molecular Genetics, 2007