title: Elucidating potentially significant genomic regions involved in the initiation and progression of undifferentiated pleomorphic sarcoma.
abstract: Sarcomas are cancers that arise in soft tissues or bone and make up a small percentage of malignancies. In an effort to identify potential genetic targets for therapy, this study explores the genomic landscape of a metastatic undifferentiated pleomorphic sarcoma (UPS) with spindle cell morphology. Thick sections (50 µm) of formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded tissue from a primary, recurrent, and metastatic tumor were collected and processed from a single patient for DNA content-based flow-sorting and analyses. Nuclei of diploid and aneuploid populations were sorted from the malignant tissues and their genomes interrogated with array comparative genomic hybridization. The third sample was highly degraded and did not contain any intact ploidy peaks in our flow assays. A 2.5N aneuploid population was identified in the primary and recurrent sample. We detected a series of shared and unique genomic aberrations in the sorted aneuploid populations. The patterns of aberrations suggest that two similar but independent clonal populations arose during the clinical history of this rare tumor. None of these aberrations were detected in the matching sorted diploid samples. The targeted regions of interest might play a role in UPS and may lead to clinical significance with further investigation.
authors.affiliation: Cancer and Cell Biology Division, Translational Genomics Research Institute, Phoenix, AZ;
authors.forename: Paul
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Kurywchak
authors.forename: Jeff
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Kiefer
authors.forename: Elizabeth
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Lenkiewicz
authors.forename: Lisa
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Evers
authors.forename: Tara
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Holley
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Barrett
authors.forename: Glen J
authors.initials: GJ
authors.lastname: Weiss
keywords: array comparative genomic hybridization.; flow-sort cytometry; undifferentiated pleomorphic sarcoma