Abstract
Papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC) is the most common type of thyroid cancer. Here, we describe the genomic landscape of 496 PTCs. We observed a low frequency of somatic alterations (relative to other carcinomas) and extended the set of known PTC driver alterations to include EIF1AX, PPM1D, and CHEK2 and diverse gene fusions. These discoveries reduced the fraction of PTC cases with unknown oncogenic driver from 25% to 3.5%. Combined analyses of genomic variants, gene expression, and methylation demonstrated that different driver groups lead to different pathologies with distinct signaling and differentiation characteristics. Similarly, we identified distinct molecular subgroups of BRAF-mutant tumors, and multidimensional analyses highlighted a potential involvement of oncomiRs in less-differentiated subgroups. Our results propose a reclassification of thyroid cancers into molecular subtypes that better reflect their underlying signaling and differentiation properties, which has the potential to improve their pathological classification and better inform the management of the disease.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 676-690 |
Number of pages | 15 |
Journal | Cell |
Volume | 159 |
Issue number | 3 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Oct 23 2014 |
Funding
We are grateful to all the patients and families who contributed to this study, to Chris Gunter for editing, and Margi Sheth and Jiashan (Julia) Zhang for project management. Thomas Giordano thanks his colleagues who covered his clinical duties. Supported by the following grants from the United States National Institutes of Health: 5U24CA143799, 5U24CA143835, 5U24CA143840, 5U24CA143843, 5U24CA143845, 5U24CA143848, 5U24CA143858, 5U24CA143866, 5U24CA143867, 5U24CA143882, 5U24CA143883, 5U24CA144025, U54HG003067, U54HG003079, and U54HG003273, P30CA16672. Yuri Nikiforov is a consultant for Quest Diagnostics. Raju Kucherlapati serves on the Board of Directors of KEW Group, Inc. Daniel J. Weisenberger is a consultant for Zymo Research Corporation.
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology