Published OnlineFirst February 16, 2011; DOI: 10.1158/1078-0432.CCR-10-1551 Clinical Cancer Imaging, Diagnosis, Prognosis Research Array-Based Comparative Genomic Hybridization Identifies CDK4 and FOXM1 Alterations as Independent Predictors of Survival in Malignant Peripheral Nerve Sheath Tumor Jinsheng Yu1, Hrishikesh Deshmukh1, Jacqueline E. Payton1, Christopher Dunham3, Bernd W. Scheithauer4, Tarik Tihan5, Richard A. Prayson6, Abhijit Guha7, Julia A. Bridge8, Rosalie E. Ferner9, Guy M. Lindberg10, Rebecca J. Gutmann2, Ryan J. Emnett2, Lorena Salavaggione1, David H. Gutmann2, Rakesh Nagarajan1, Mark A. Watson1, and Arie Perry1 Abstract Purpose: Malignant peripheral nerve sheath tumors (MPNST) are highly aggressive sarcomas with variable patient survival and few known prognostically relevant genomic biomarkers. To identify survival- associated genomic biomarkers, we performed high-resolution array-based comparative genomic hybri- dization (aCGH) on a large set of MPNSTs. Experimental Design: Candidate gene alterations identified by aCGH in 38 MPNSTs were validated at the DNA, RNA, and protein levels on these same tumors and an independent set of 87 MPNST specimens. Results: aCGH revealed highly complex copy number alterations, including both previously reported and completely novel loci. Four regions of copy number gain were associated with poor patient survival. Candidate genes in these regions include SOX5 (12p12.1), NOL1 and MLF2 (12p13.31), FOXM1 and FKBP1 (12p13.33), and CDK4 and TSPAN31 (12q14.1). Alterations of these candidate genes and several others of interest (ERBB2, MYC and TP53) were confirmed by at least 1 complementary methodology, including DNA and mRNA quantitative real-time PCR, mRNA expression profiling, and tissue microarray- based fluorescence in situ hybridization and immunohistochemistry. Multivariate analysis showed that CDK4 gain/amplification and increased FOXM1 protein expression were the most significant independent predictors for poor survival in MPNST patients (P < 0.05). Conclusions: Our study provides new and independently confirmed candidate genes that could serve as genomic biomarkers for overall survival in MPNST patients. Clin Cancer Res; 17(7); 1924–34. Ó2011 AACR. Introduction Malignant peripheral nerve sheath tumors (MPNST) are 1 Authors' Affiliation: Departments of Pathology and Immunology, and highly aggressive and frequently lethal Schwann cell- 2Neurology, Washington University School of Medicine, Saint Louis, Mis- souri; 3Division of Anatomic Pathology, Children's and Women's Health derived neoplasms associated with poor survival (1–5). Centre of B.C., Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada; 4Department of Roughly half of MPNSTs develop sporadically and the Anatomic Pathology, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota; 5Department of Pathology, University of California in San Francisco, San Francisco, other half arise in the setting of neurofibromatosis type California; 6Department of Anatomic Pathology, Cleveland Clinic Founda- 1 (NF1). The 5-year survival rate for NF1-associated MPNST tion, Cleveland, Ohio; 7Division of Neurosurgery, University Health Net- patients is reportedly half of that for sporadic cases (21% work, Toronto, Ontario, Canada; 8Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, University of Nebraska Medical Center, Omaha, Nebraska; 9Department of vs. 42%; ref 5). However, other studies suggest that a Clinical Neuroscience, King's College London, London, United Kingdom; diagnosis of NF1 does not affect survival (6). Clinicopatho- 10 and Pathologist, Caris Diagnostics, Dallas, Texas logic factors, such as tumor grade and anatomic site report- Note: Supplementary data for this article are available at Clinical Cancer edly influence MPNST patient outcome, although the Research Online (http://clincancerres.aacrjournals.org/) clinical course remains highly variable and difficult to Current address for A. Perry: Department of Pathology, Division of Neu- predict in individual patients. ropathology, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA. Traditional cytogenetic studies have reported that Corresponding Author: Arie Perry, Department of Pathology, Division of Neuropathology, University of California, San Francisco, 505 Parnassus MPNSTs have remarkably complex karyotypes with a wide Avenue, #M551, Box #0102, San Francisco, CA 94143. Phone: 415-476- spectrum of chromosomal alterations including transloca- 5236 or 415-476-4961; Fax: 415-476-7963. E-mail: [email protected]. tions, duplications, and numerical gains and losses, making doi: 10.1158/1078-0432.CCR-10-1551 it difficult to discern which of these alterations are biolo- Ó2011 American Association for Cancer Research. gically relevant (7–9). Unfortunately, no single alteration 1924 Clin Cancer Res; 17(7) April 1, 2011 Downloaded from clincancerres.aacrjournals.org on October 2, 2021. © 2011 American Association for Cancer Research. Published OnlineFirst February 16, 2011; DOI: 10.1158/1078-0432.CCR-10-1551 Genomic Biomarkers and Survival in MPNST Translational Relevance Among the 38 patients, 23 (60%) individuals carried a previous diagnosis of NF1 and 15 (40%) were sporadic Malignant peripheral nerve sheath tumor (MPNST) is cases. At the time of last follow-up, 14 (37%) cases had an aggressive malignancy with considerable biological documented metastases, whereas 16 (42%) had no evi- variability, a variable and often lethal clinical course, and dence of metastatic disease. Recurrence data were unavail- limited response to current therapeutic approaches. A able for 8 of the cases. The majority (33/38) of cases major impediment to more effective disease management subjected to genomic analysis was primary tumors, has been a lack of available prognostic or predictive although 5 cases of recurrent tumors were also included. biomarkers. Through initial identification of several sur- A full accounting of clinical and pathological data is vival-associated copy number alterations, followed by provided in Supplemental Table T1. DNAs and RNAs confirmatory assays and a comprehensive multivariate were extracted from frozen tumors, using commercial analysis, our present study demonstrates that CDK4 reagents (QIAamp DNA Mini Kit, Qiagen; Trizol reagent, ’ gain/amplification and increased FOXM1 protein expres- Invitrogen) and following manufacturers standard pro- sion are significant independent predictors for poor sur- tocols. These same specimens were previously utilized vival in MPNST patients. If confirmed in additional for gene expression profiling (17). For biomarker valida- prospective studies, these biomarkers may provide clini- tion studies, another independent set of 121 formalin- cally useful information for managing patients with this fixed paraffin-embedded MPNST tumors represented in aggressive malignancy. Interestingly, a previous report a tissue microarray (TMA) was utilized; 87 of these has demonstrated that the multi-kinase inhibitor sorafe- patients had clinical annotation and follow-up data nib can inhibit MPNST growth, suggesting the potential (18). Of these 87 annotated cases, 25 (29%) were NF1- of CDK4 as a therapeutic target and also as a potential associated and 62 (71%) were sporadic MPNSTs. A total predictive biomarker of response to sorafenib therapy. of 68 primary, 12 locally recurrent, and 7 metastatic tumors were represented. The majority of the tumors (78/87) were high grade and 9/87 were classified as low grade. Supplemental Table T2 provides additional data has consistently proven to be diagnostically or prognosti- regarding the validation set. All tissue specimens and cally useful across multiple studies. For example, alterations clinical data from these patients were collected and uti- on chromosome 17 (where the NF1 gene is located) are lized in accordance with Institutional Review Board– expected, given that MPNSTs are highly over-represented approved protocols. among NF1 patients. However, NF1 losses are not always encountered (8–10), suggesting that other tumorigenic Array-based comparative genome hybridization pathways also exist. A major limitation of traditional cyto- TheAffymetrixGenome-Wide500KSNPMapping genetic studies, however, has been their limited resolution arraysetwasemployedtodetectgenomicalterations of 10 Mb. This has complicated the discovery of specific, in the set of 38 MPNSTs. For aCGH analysis, relative recurring genetic alterations involving small regions. copy number values of the MPNSTs were generated using High-resolution genome-wide DNA microarray analyses a reference set of 37 nonmalignant DNA samples derived have identified many novel tumor-specific microdeletions from 22 males and 15 females. To identify meaningful and amplifications in leukemia, lung, and ovarian cancers CNAs, 2 DNA copy number analysis tools, Partek Geno- (11–13). To date, a similar approach applied to MPNSTs mics Suite (PARTEK, www.partek.com) and Copy Num- has been limited to few studies with either less compre- ber Analyzer for GeneChip (CNAG, www.genome.umin. hensive or lower resolution array platforms (1 Mb; refs jp; ref 19) were applied to the aCGH data. CNAs identi- 14–16). In the present study, we have analyzed a larger fied with each of the 2 tools were compared with identify cohort of MPNSTs utilizing both Affymetrix and Nimble- recurrent regions with minimal overlap. Physical posi- gen array-based comparative genome hybridization tions of CNAs were annotated according to human gen- (aCGH) platforms (0.25–2.5 kb of resolution with whole ome build 35 (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov). All CNAs