The Wang Genomic Laboratory has uncovered the first comprehensive mutational landscape of secondary glioblastoma and identified an actionable mutation for precision cancer treatment
Quanhua Mu, Yiyun Chen, Biaobin Jiang, and Yoonhee Nam from Prof. Jiguang Wang’s lab have integrated sequencing data from not only the public literature but also a number of newly collected cases by Dr. Tao Jiang’s team from Beijing Neurosurgical Institute and Beijing Tiantan Hospital, and uncovered the mutational landscape of secondary glioblastoma (sGBM) in East Asian cohort. This systematic study reveals genomic differences among low-grade glioma, primary glioblastoma and sGBM. Strikingly, their study discovered that genomic mutations that lead to METex14 are highly enriched in sGBM cases, and the presence of METex14 transcripts is an important biomarker that predicts significantly worse patient survival. More importantly, MET protein is an actionable drug target, which has been verified in a MET-targeted Phase I clinical trial led by our collaborator at Beijing Tiantan Hospital. Out of the six sGBM patients who completed the trial, two achieved the partial response, two achieved stable disease, and two have progressed disease. This encouraging result highlights the great potential of precision cancer medicine in treating previous incurable cancers by tailoring particular therapies according to personalized genomic information.
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