Authors:
Christopher A. Maher, Chandan Kumar-Sinha, Xuhong Cao, Shanker Kalyana-Sundaram, Bo Han, Xiaojun Jing, Lee Sam, Terrence Barrette, Nallasivam Palanisamy, & Arul M. Chinnaiyan
Summary:
Recurrent gene fusions, typically associated with haematological malignancies and rare bone and soft-tissue tumours1, have recently been described in common solid tumours. Here we use an integrative analysis of high-throughput long- and short-read transcriptome sequencing of cancer cells to discover novel gene fusions. As a proof of concept, we successfully used integrative transcriptome sequencing to 're-discover' the BCR–ABL1 gene fusion in a chronic myelogenous leukaemia cell line and the TMPRSS2–ERG gene fusion in a prostate cancer cell line and tissues. Additionally, we nominated, and experimentally validated, novel gene fusions resulting in chimaeric transcripts in cancer cell lines and tumours. Taken together, this study establishes a robust pipeline for the discovery of novel gene chimaeras using high-throughput sequencing, opening up an important class of cancer-related mutations for comprehensive characterization.
Source:
Nature; (01/11/09)