Browsing by Author "Morgan, Gareth J."

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    Epigenomic translocation of H3K4me3 broad domains over oncogenes following hijacking of super-enhancers
    (CSH Press, 2021-12) Mikulasova, Aneta; Kent, Daniel; Trevisan-Herraz, Marco; Karataraki, Nefeli; Fung, Kent T. M.; Ashby, Cody; Cieslak, Agata; Yaccoby, Shmuel; Rhee, Frits van; Zangari, Maurizio; Thanendrarajan, Sharmilan; Schinke, Carolina; Morgan, Gareth J.; Asnafi, Vahid; Spicuglia, Salvatore; Brackley, Chris A.; Corcoran, Anne E.; Hambleton, Sophie; Walker, Brian A.; Rico, Daniel; Russell, Lisa J.; Medicine, School of Medicine
    Chromosomal translocations are important drivers of hematological malignancies whereby proto-oncogenes are activated by juxtaposition with super-enhancers, often called enhancer hijacking. We analysed the epigenomic consequences of rearrangements between the super-enhancers of the immunoglobulin heavy locus (IGH) and proto-oncogene CCND1 that are common in B cell malignancies. By integrating BLUEPRINT epigenomic data with DNA breakpoint detection, we characterised the normal chromatin landscape of the human IGH locus and its dynamics after pathological genomic rearrangement. We detected an H3K4me3 broad domain (BD) within the IGH locus of healthy B cells that was absent in samples with IGH-CCND1 translocations. The appearance of H3K4me3-BD over CCND1 in the latter was associated with overexpression and extensive chromatin accessibility of its gene body. We observed similar cancer-specific H3K4me3-BDs associated with super-enhancer hijacking of other common oncogenes in B cell (MAF, MYC and FGFR3/NSD2) and in T-cell malignancies (LMO2, TLX3 and TAL1). Our analysis suggests that H3K4me3-BDs can be created by super-enhancers and supports the new concept of epigenomic translocation, where the relocation of H3K4me3-BDs from cell identity genes to oncogenes accompanies the translocation of super-enhancers.
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    The functional epigenetic landscape of aberrant gene expression in molecular subgroups of newly diagnosed multiple myeloma
    (BMC, 2020-08-06) Choudhury, Samrat Roy; Ashby, Cody; Tytarenko, Ruslana; Bauer, Michael; Wang, Yan; Deshpande, Shayu; Den, Judith; Schinke, Carolina; Zangari, Maurizio; Thanendrarajan, Sharmilan; Davies, Faith E.; van Rhee, Frits; Morgan, Gareth J.; Walker, Brian A.; Medicine, School of Medicine
    Background Multiple Myeloma (MM) is a hematological malignancy with genomic heterogeneity and poor survival outcome. Apart from the central role of genetic lesions, epigenetic anomalies have been identified as drivers in the development of the disease. Methods Alterations in the DNA methylome were mapped in 52 newly diagnosed MM (NDMM) patients of six molecular subgroups and matched with loci-specific chromatin marks to define their impact on gene expression. Differential DNA methylation analysis was performed using DMAP with a ≥10% increase (hypermethylation) or decrease (hypomethylation) in NDMM subgroups, compared to control samples, considered significant for all the subsequent analyses with p<0.05 after adjusting for a false discovery rate. Results We identified differentially methylated regions (DMRs) within the etiological cytogenetic subgroups of myeloma, compared to control plasma cells. Using gene expression data we identified genes that are dysregulated and correlate with DNA methylation levels, indicating a role for DNA methylation in their transcriptional control. We demonstrated that 70% of DMRs in the MM epigenome were hypomethylated and overlapped with repressive H3K27me3. In contrast, differentially expressed genes containing hypermethylated DMRs within the gene body or hypomethylated DMRs at the promoters overlapped with H3K4me1, H3K4me3, or H3K36me3 marks. Additionally, enrichment of BRD4 or MED1 at the H3K27ac enriched DMRs functioned as super-enhancers (SE), controlling the overexpression of genes or gene-cassettes. Conclusions Therefore, this study presents the underlying epigenetic regulatory networks of gene expression dysregulation in NDMM patients and identifies potential targets for future therapies.
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    Genetic subtypes of smoldering multiple myeloma are associated with distinct pathogenic phenotypes and clinical outcomes
    (Springer, 2022-06-15) Bustoros, Mark; Anand, Shankara; Sklavenitis-Pistofidis, Romanos; Redd, Robert; Boyle, Eileen M.; Zhitomirsky, Benny; Dunford, Andrew J.; Tai, Yu-Tzu; Chavda, Selina J.; Boehner, Cody; Neuse, Carl Jannes; Rahmat, Mahshid; Dutta, Ankit; Casneuf, Tineke; Verona, Raluca; Kastritis, Efstathis; Trippa, Lorenzo; Stewart, Chip; Walker, Brian A.; Davies, Faith E.; Dimopoulos, Meletios-Athanasios; Bergsagel, P. Leif; Yong, Kwee; Morgan, Gareth J.; Aguet, François; Getz, Gad; Ghobrial, Irene M.; Medicine, School of Medicine
    Smoldering multiple myeloma (SMM) is a precursor condition of multiple myeloma (MM) with significant heterogeneity in disease progression. Existing clinical models of progression risk do not fully capture this heterogeneity. Here we integrate 42 genetic alterations from 214 SMM patients using unsupervised binary matrix factorization (BMF) clustering and identify six distinct genetic subtypes. These subtypes are differentially associated with established MM-related RNA signatures, oncogenic and immune transcriptional profiles, and evolving clinical biomarkers. Three genetic subtypes are associated with increased risk of progression to active MM in both the primary and validation cohorts, indicating they can be used to better predict high and low-risk patients within the currently used clinical risk stratification models.
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    Insights into high-risk multiple myeloma from an analysis of the role of PHF19 in cancer
    (Springer Nature, 2021-12-02) Ghamlouch, Hussein; Boyle, Eileen M.; Blaney, Patrick; Wang, Yubao; Choi, Jinyoung; Williams, Louis; Bauer, Michael; Auclair, Daniel; Bruno, Benedetto; Walker, Brian A.; Davies, Faith E.; Morgan, Gareth J.; Medicine, School of Medicine
    Despite improvements in outcome, 15-25% of newly diagnosed multiple myeloma (MM) patients have treatment resistant high-risk (HR) disease with a poor survival. The lack of a genetic basis for HR has focused attention on the role played by epigenetic changes. Aberrant expression and somatic mutations affecting genes involved in the regulation of tri-methylation of the lysine (K) 27 on histone 3 H3 (H3K27me3) are common in cancer. H3K27me3 is catalyzed by EZH2, the catalytic subunit of the Polycomb Repressive Complex 2 (PRC2). The deregulation of H3K27me3 has been shown to be involved in oncogenic transformation and tumor progression in a variety of hematological malignancies including MM. Recently we have shown that aberrant overexpression of the PRC2 subunit PHD Finger Protein 19 (PHF19) is the most significant overall contributor to HR status further focusing attention on the role played by epigenetic change in MM. By modulating both the PRC2/EZH2 catalytic activity and recruitment, PHF19 regulates the expression of key genes involved in cell growth and differentiation. Here we review the expression, regulation and function of PHF19 both in normal and the pathological contexts of solid cancers and MM. We present evidence that strongly implicates PHF19 in the regulation of genes important in cell cycle and the genetic stability of MM cells making it highly relevant to HR MM behavior. A detailed understanding of the normal and pathological functions of PHF19 will allow us to design therapeutic strategies able to target aggressive subsets of MM.
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    Myeloma Genome Project Panel is a Comprehensive Targeted Genomics Panel for Molecular Profiling of Patients with Multiple Myeloma
    (American Association for Cancer Research, 2022) Sudha, Parvathi; Ahsan, Aarif; Ashby, Cody; Kausar, Tasneem; Khera, Akhil; Kazeroun, Mohammad H.; Hsu, Chih-Chao; Wang, Lin; Fitzsimons, Evelyn; Salminen, Outi; Blaney, Patrick; Czader, Magdalena; Williams, Jonathan; Zaid, Mohammad I. Abu; Ansari-Pour, Naser; Yong, Kwee L.; van Rhee, Frits; Pierceall, William E.; Morgan, Gareth J.; Flynt, Erin; Gooding, Sarah; Abonour, Rafat; Ramasamy, Karthik; Thakurta, Anjan; Walker, Brian A.; Medicine, School of Medicine
    Purpose: We designed a comprehensive multiple myeloma targeted sequencing panel to identify common genomic abnormalities in a single assay and validated it against known standards. Experimental design: The panel comprised 228 genes/exons for mutations, 6 regions for translocations, and 56 regions for copy number abnormalities (CNA). Toward panel validation, targeted sequencing was conducted on 233 patient samples and further validated using clinical FISH (translocations), multiplex ligation probe analysis (MLPA; CNAs), whole-genome sequencing (WGS; CNAs, mutations, translocations), or droplet digital PCR (ddPCR) of known standards (mutations). Results: Canonical immunoglobulin heavy chain translocations were detected in 43.2% of patients by sequencing, and aligned with FISH except for 1 patient. CNAs determined by sequencing and MLPA for 22 regions were comparable in 103 samples and concordance between platforms was R2 = 0.969. Variant allele frequency (VAF) for 74 mutations were compared between sequencing and ddPCR with concordance of R2 = 0.9849. Conclusions: In summary, we have developed a targeted sequencing panel that is as robust or superior to FISH and WGS. This molecular panel is cost-effective, comprehensive, clinically actionable, and can be routinely deployed to assist risk stratification at diagnosis or posttreatment to guide sequencing of therapies.
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    Perspectives on the Risk-Stratified Treatment of Multiple Myeloma
    (American Association for Cancer Research, 2022) Davies, Faith E.; Pawlyn, Charlotte; Usmani, Saad Z.; San-Miguel, Jesus F.; Einsele, Hermann; Boyle, Eileen M.; Corre, Jill; Auclair, Daniel; Cho, Hearn Jay; Lonial, Sagar; Sonneveld, Pieter; Stewart, A. Keith; Bergsagel, P. Leif; Kaiser, Martin F.; Weisel, Katja; Keats, Jonathan J.; Mikhael, Joseph R.; Morgan, Kathryn E.; Ghobrial, Irene M.; Orlowski, Robert Z.; Landgren, C. Ola; Gay, Francesca; Caers, Joseph; Chng, Wee Joo; Chari, Ajai; Walker, Brian A.; Kumar, Shaji K.; Costa, Luciano J.; Anderson, Kenneth C.; Morgan, Gareth J.; Medicine, School of Medicine
    The multiple myeloma treatment landscape has changed dramatically. This change, paralleled by an increase in scientific knowledge, has resulted in significant improvement in survival. However, heterogeneity remains in clinical outcomes, with a proportion of patients not benefiting from current approaches and continuing to have a poor prognosis. A significant proportion of the variability in outcome can be predicted on the basis of clinical and biochemical parameters and tumor-acquired genetic variants, allowing for risk stratification and a more personalized approach to therapy. This article discusses the principles that can enable the rational and effective development of therapeutic approaches for high-risk multiple myeloma.
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    Plasma cells expression from smouldering myeloma to myeloma reveals the importance of the PRC2 complex, cell cycle progression, and the divergent evolutionary pathways within the different molecular subgroups
    (Springer, 2022-02) Boyle, Eileen M.; Rosenthal, Adam; Ghamlouch, Hussein; Wang, Yan; Farmer, Phillip; Rutherford, Michael; Ashby, Cody; Bauer, Michael; Johnson, Sarah K.; Wardell, Christopher P.; Wang, Yubao; Hoering, Antje; Schinke, Carolina; Thanendrarajan, Sharmilan; Zangari, Maurizio; Barlogie, Bart; Dhodapkar, Madhav V.; Davies, Faith E.; Morgan, Gareth J.; van Rhee, Frits; Walker, Brian A.; Medicine, School of Medicine
    Sequencing studies have shed some light on the pathogenesis of progression from smouldering multiple myeloma (SMM) and symptomatic multiple myeloma (MM). Given the scarcity of smouldering samples, little data are available to determine which translational programmes are dysregulated and whether the mechanisms of progression are uniform across the main molecular subgroups. In this work, we investigated 223 SMM and 1348 MM samples from the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) for which we had gene expression profiling (GEP). Patients were analysed by TC-7 subgroup for gene expression changes between SMM and MM. Among the commonly dysregulated genes in each subgroup, PHF19 and EZH2 highlight the importance of the PRC2.1 complex. We show that subgroup specific differences exist even at the SMM stage of disease with different biological features driving progression within each TC molecular subgroup. These data suggest that MMSET SMM has already transformed, but that the other precursor diseases are distinct clinical entities from their symptomatic counterpart.
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    Structural variants shape the genomic landscape and clinical outcome of multiple myeloma
    (Springer Nature, 2022-05-30) Ashby, Cody; Boyle, Eileen M.; Bauer, Michael A.; Mikulasova, Aneta; Wardell, Christopher P.; Williams, Louis; Siegel, Ariel; Blaney, Patrick; Braunstein, Marc; Kaminetsky, David; Keats, Jonathan; Maura, Francesco; Landgren, Ola; Walker, Brian A.; Davies, Faith E.; Morgan, Gareth J.; Medicine, School of Medicine
    Deciphering genomic architecture is key to identifying novel disease drivers and understanding the mechanisms underlying myeloma initiation and progression. In this work, using the CoMMpass dataset, we show that structural variants (SV) occur in a nonrandom fashion throughout the genome with an increased frequency in the t(4;14), RB1, or TP53 mutated cases and reduced frequency in t(11;14) cases. By mapping sites of chromosomal rearrangements to topologically associated domains and identifying significantly upregulated genes by RNAseq we identify both predicted and novel putative driver genes. These data highlight the heterogeneity of transcriptional dysregulation occurring as a consequence of both the canonical and novel structural variants. Further, it shows that the complex rearrangements chromoplexy, chromothripsis and templated insertions are common in MM with each variant having its own distinct frequency and impact on clinical outcome. Chromothripsis is associated with a significant independent negative impact on clinical outcome in newly diagnosed cases consistent with its use alongside other clinical and genetic risk factors to identify prognosis.
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    The molecular make up of smoldering myeloma highlights the evolutionary pathways leading to multiple myeloma
    (Springer Nature, 2021-01-12) Boyle, Eileen M.; Deshpande, Shayu; Tytarenko, Ruslana; Ashby, Cody; Wang, Yan; Bauer, Michael A.; Johnson, Sarah K.; Wardell, Christopher P.; Thanendrarajan, Sharmilan; Zangari, Maurizio; Facon, Thierry; Dumontet, Charles; Barlogie, Bart; Arbini, Arnaldo; Rustad, Even H.; Maura, Francesco; Landgren, Ola; Zhan, Fenghuang; van Rhee, Frits; Schinke, Carolina; Davies, Faith E.; Morgan, Gareth J.; Walker, Brian A.; Medicine, School of Medicine
    Smoldering myeloma (SMM) is associated with a high-risk of progression to myeloma (MM). We report the results of a study of 82 patients with both targeted sequencing that included a capture of the immunoglobulin and MYC regions. By comparing these results to newly diagnosed myeloma (MM) we show fewer NRAS and FAM46C mutations together with fewer adverse translocations, del(1p), del(14q), del(16q), and del(17p) in SMM consistent with their role as drivers of the transition to MM. KRAS mutations are associated with a shorter time to progression (HR 3.5 (1.5-8.1), p = 0.001). In an analysis of change in clonal structure over time we studied 53 samples from nine patients at multiple time points. Branching evolutionary patterns, novel mutations, biallelic hits in crucial tumour suppressor genes, and segmental copy number changes are key mechanisms underlying the transition to MM, which can precede progression and be used to guide early intervention strategies.
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    The spatio-temporal evolution of multiple myeloma from baseline to relapse-refractory states
    (Springer, 2022-08-03) Rasche, Leo; Schinke, Carolina; Maura , Francesco; Bauer , Michael A.; Ashby, Cody; Deshpande , Shayu; Poos , Alexandra M.; Zangari , Maurizio; Thanendrarajan, Sharmilan; Davies, Faith E.; Walker, Brian A.; Barlogie, Bart; Landgren, Ola; Morgan, Gareth J.; van Rhee, Frits; Weinhold , Niels; Medicine, School of Medicine
    Deciphering Multiple Myeloma evolution in the whole bone marrow is key to inform curative strategies. Here, we perform spatial-longitudinal whole-exome sequencing, including 140 samples collected from 24 Multiple Myeloma patients during up to 14 years. Applying imaging-guided sampling we observe three evolutionary patterns, including relapse driven by a single-cell expansion, competing/co-existing sub-clones, and unique sub-clones at distinct locations. While we do not find the unique relapse sub-clone in the baseline focal lesion(s), we show a close phylogenetic relationship between baseline focal lesions and relapse disease, highlighting focal lesions as hotspots of tumor evolution. In patients with ≥3 focal lesions on positron-emission-tomography at diagnosis, relapse is driven by multiple distinct sub-clones, whereas in other patients, a single-cell expansion is typically seen (p < 0.01). Notably, we observe resistant sub-clones that can be hidden over years, suggesting that a prerequisite for curative therapies would be to overcome not only tumor heterogeneity but also dormancy.