Background And Objectives: By convention, patients who have undergone a craniotomy for tumor are monitored in a neurocritical care unit (NCCU) overnight, yet there is little evidence to justify the need for such intense care. Here, we compared postoperative adverse events in patients after brain tumor surgeries surveilled in a NCCU overnight or postanesthesia care unit (PACU) for a shorter duration.
Methods: We retrospectively studied 1070 consecutive patients who underwent craniotomy for brain tumor between 2016 and 2021.
Lung Cancer
September 2024
Objective: Pulmonary blastoma is a rare, biphasic, adult-onset lung tumor. In this study, we investigate whether DICER1 pathogenic variants are a feature of pulmonary blastomas through in-depth analysis of the molecular events defining them.
Methods: We performed exome-wide sequencing and DNA methylation profiling of 8 pulmonary blastomas from 6 affected persons.
The existence of neural stem cells (NSCs) in adult human brain neurogenic regions remains unresolved. To address this, we created a cell atlas of the adult human subventricular zone (SVZ) derived from fresh neurosurgical samples using single-cell transcriptomics. We discovered 2 adult radial glia (RG)-like populations, aRG1 and aRG2.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Compared to minimally invasive brain metastases (MI BrM), highly invasive (HI) lesions form abundant contacts with cells in the peritumoral brain parenchyma and are associated with poor prognosis. Reactive astrocytes (RAs) labeled by phosphorylated STAT3 (pSTAT3) have recently emerged as a promising therapeutic target for BrM. Here, we explore whether the BrM invasion pattern is influenced by pSTAT3+ RAs and may serve as a predictive biomarker for STAT3 inhibition.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe studied a patient with mitochondrial DNA depletion in skeletal muscle and a multiorgan phenotype, including fatal encephalomyopathy, retinopathy, optic atrophy, and sensorineural hearing loss. Instead of pathogenic variants in the mitochondrial maintenance genes, we identified previously unpublished variant in DHX16 gene, a de novo heterozygous c.1360C>T (p.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFUnlabelled: CDC20 is a coactivator of the anaphase promoting complex/cyclosome (APC/C) and is essential for mitotic progression. APC/CCDC20 is inhibited by the spindle assembly checkpoint (SAC), which prevents premature separation of sister chromatids and aneuploidy in daughter cells. Although overexpression of CDC20 is common in many cancers, oncogenic mutations have never been identified in humans.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Glioblastoma is a treatment-resistant brain cancer. Its hierarchical cellular nature and its tumor microenvironment (TME) before, during, and after treatments remain unresolved.
Methods: Here, we used single-cell RNA sequencing to analyze new and recurrent glioblastoma and the nearby subventricular zone (SVZ).
DICER1 syndrome is an autosomal dominant tumour predisposition syndrome usually affecting persons under 30 years of age. Many of the associated benign and malignant lesions occur almost exclusively in DICER1 syndrome. One such tumour, pituitary blastoma (pitB), overexpresses PRAME 500x above control levels.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Familial ovarian cancer (OC) cases not harbouring pathogenic variants in either of the BRCA1 and BRCA2 OC-predisposing genes, which function in homologous recombination (HR) of DNA, could involve pathogenic variants in other DNA repair pathway genes.
Methods: Whole exome sequencing was used to identify rare variants in HR genes in a BRCA1 and BRCA2 pathogenic variant negative OC family of French Canadian (FC) ancestry, a population exhibiting genetic drift. OC cases and cancer-free individuals from FC and non-FC populations were investigated for carrier frequency of FANCI c.
Pituitary blastoma (PitB) has recently been identified as a rare and potentially lethal pediatric intracranial tumor. All cases that have been studied molecularly possess at least one DICER1 pathogenic variant. Here, we characterized nine pituitary samples, including three fresh frozen PitBs, three normal fetal pituitary glands and three normal postnatal pituitary glands using small-RNA-Seq, RNA-Seq, methylation profiling, whole genome sequencing and Nanostring® miRNA analyses; an extended series of 21 pituitary samples was used for validation purposes.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Sixty percent of surgically resected brain metastases (BrM) recur within 1 year. These recurrences have long been thought to result from the dispersion of cancer cells during surgery. We tested the alternative hypothesis that invasion of cancer cells into the adjacent brain plays a significant role in local recurrence and shortened overall survival.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAn amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCancer stem cells are critical for cancer initiation, development, and treatment resistance. Our understanding of these processes, and how they relate to glioblastoma heterogeneity, is limited. To overcome these limitations, we performed single-cell RNA sequencing on 53586 adult glioblastoma cells and 22637 normal human fetal brain cells, and compared the lineage hierarchy of the developing human brain to the transcriptome of cancer cells.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBACKGROUNDDICER1 is the only miRNA biogenesis component associated with an inherited tumor syndrome, featuring multinodular goiter (MNG) and rare pediatric-onset lesions. Other susceptibility genes for familial forms of MNG likely exist.METHODSWhole-exome sequencing of a kindred with early-onset MNG and schwannomatosis was followed by investigation of germline pathogenic variants that fully segregated with the disease.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPolymicrogyria (PMG) is a heterogeneous brain malformation that may result from prenatal vascular disruption or infection, or from numerous genetic causes that still remain difficult to identify. We identified three unrelated patients with polymicrogyria and duplications of chromosome 2p, defined the smallest region of overlap, and performed gene pathway analysis using Cytoscape. The smallest region of overlap in all three children involved 2p16.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: This study reports the genetic features of four Caucasian males from the Saguenay-Lac-St-Jean region affected by partial agenesis of the corpus callosum (ACC) with hypotonia, epilepsy, developmental delay, microcephaly, hypoplasia, and autistic behavior.
Methods: We performed whole exome sequencing (WES) to identify new genes involved in this pathological phenotype. The regions of interest were subsequently sequenced for family members.
One of a pair of monozygous twins was diagnosed and died of small cell carcinoma of the ovary of hypercalcemic type (SCCOHT) at the age of 30 years. Her sister remained unaffected and was very concerned about her risk for developing SCCOHT. By performing comprehensive molecular analysis using whole exome sequencing (WES) approach, we showed that the deceased twin's tumour has bi-allelic somatic genetic defects (a pathogenic frameshift deletion in SMARCA4 and LOH on chr19p).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFA novel multi-organ disease that is fatal in early childhood was identified in three patients from two non-consanguineous families. These children were born asymptomatic but at the age of 2 months they manifested progressive multi-organ symptoms resembling no previously known disease. The main clinical features included progressive cerebropulmonary symptoms, malabsorption, progressive growth failure, recurrent infections, chronic haemolytic anaemia and transient liver dysfunction.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe original version of this Article contained an error in the title, which was incorrectly given as 'APRDX1 mutant allele causes a MMACHC secondary epimutation in cblC patients'. This has now been corrected in both the PDF and HTML versions of the Article to read 'A PRDX1 mutant allele causes a MMACHC secondary epimutation in cblC patients'.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNat Commun
January 2018
To date, epimutations reported in man have been somatic and erased in germlines. Here, we identify a cause of the autosomal recessive cblC class of inborn errors of vitamin B metabolism that we name "epi-cblC". The subjects are compound heterozygotes for a genetic mutation and for a promoter epimutation, detected in blood, fibroblasts, and sperm, at the MMACHC locus; 5-azacytidine restores the expression of MMACHC in fibroblasts.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFRAD51D is a key player in DNA repair by homologous recombination (HR), and truncating variant carriers have an increased risk for ovarian cancer. However, the contribution of nontruncating variants to cancer predisposition remains uncertain. Using deep sequencing and case-control genotyping studies, we show that in French Canadians, the missense variant c.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInvest Ophthalmol Vis Sci
February 2017
Purpose: To evaluate consanguineous pedigrees from Pakistan with a clinical diagnosis of nonsyndromic congenital retinal nonattachment (NCRNA) and identify genes responsible for the disease as currently only one NCRNA gene is known (atonal basic helix-loop-helix transcription factor 7: ATOH7).
Methods: We implemented a three-step genotyping platform: single nucleotide polymorphism genotyping to identify loss of heterozygosity regions in patients, Retinal Information Network panel screening for mutations in currently known retinal genes. Negative patients were then subjected to whole exome sequencing.
Several types of pediatric cancers reportedly contain high-frequency missense mutations in histone H3, yet the underlying oncogenic mechanism remains poorly characterized. Here we report that the H3 lysine 36-to-methionine (H3K36M) mutation impairs the differentiation of mesenchymal progenitor cells and generates undifferentiated sarcoma in vivo. H3K36M mutant nucleosomes inhibit the enzymatic activities of several H3K36 methyltransferases.
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