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    MET Exon 14 Skipping and Novel Actionable Variants: Diagnostic and Therapeutic Implications in Latin American Non-Small-Cell Lung Cancer Patients
    (MDPI AG, 2024-12-22) ;
    Romina V. Sepúlveda
    ;
    TAPIA DUFEY, JUAN IGNACIO
    ;
    Catalina Estay
    ;
    Vicente Soto
    <jats:p>Targeted therapy indications for actionable variants in non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) have primarily been studied in Caucasian populations, with limited data on Latin American patients. This study utilized a 52-genes next-generation sequencing (NGS) panel to analyze 1560 tumor biopsies from NSCLC patients in Chile, Brazil, and Peru. The RNA sequencing reads and DNA coverage were correlated to improve the detection of the actionable MET exon 14 skipping variant (METex14). The pathogenicity of MET variants of uncertain significance (VUSs) was assessed using bioinformatic methods, based on their predicted driver potential. The effects of the predicted drivers VUS T992I and H1094Y on c-MET signaling activation, proliferation, and migration were evaluated in HEK293T, BEAS-2B, and H1993 cell lines. Subsequently, c-Met inhibitors were tested in 2D and 3D cell cultures, and drug affinity was determined using 3D structure simulations. The prevalence of MET variants in the South American cohort was 8%, and RNA-based diagnosis detected 27% more cases of METex14 than DNA-based methods. Notably, 20% of METex14 cases with RNA reads below the detection threshold were confirmed using DNA analysis. The novel actionable T992I and H1094Y variants induced proliferation and migration through c-Met/Akt signaling. Both variants showed sensitivity to crizotinib and savolitinib, but the H1094Y variant exhibited reduced sensitivity to capmatinib. These findings highlight the importance of RNA-based METex14 diagnosis and reveal the drug sensitivity profiles of novel actionable MET variants from an understudied patient population.</jats:p>
    Scopus© Citations 4  8
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    <i>SLC6A1</i> variant pathogenicity, molecular function and phenotype: a genetic and clinical analysis
    (2023)
    Arthur Stefanski
    ;
    Eduardo Pérez-Palma
    ;
    Tobias Brünger
    ;
    Ludovica Montanucci
    ;
    Cornelius Gati
    <jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>Genetic variants in the SLC6A1 gene can cause a broad phenotypic disease spectrum by altering the protein function. Thus, systematically curated clinically relevant genotype-phenotype associations are needed to understand the disease mechanism and improve therapeutic decision-making.</jats:p> <jats:p>We aggregated genetic and clinical data from 172 individuals with likely pathogenic/pathogenic (lp/p) SLC6A1 variants and functional data for 184 variants (14.1% lp/p). Clinical and functional data were available for a subset of 126 individuals. We explored the potential associations of variant positions on the GAT1 3D structure with variant pathogenicity, altered molecular function and phenotype severity using bioinformatic approaches.</jats:p> <jats:p>The GAT1 transmembrane domains 1, 6 and extracellular loop 4 (EL4) were enriched for patient over population variants. Across functionally tested missense variants (n = 156), the spatial proximity from the ligand was associated with loss-of-function in the GAT1 transporter activity. For variants with complete loss of in vitro GABA uptake, we found a 4.6-fold enrichment in patients having severe disease versus non-severe disease (P = 2.9 × 10−3, 95% confidence interval: 1.5–15.3).</jats:p> <jats:p>In summary, we delineated associations between the 3D structure and variant pathogenicity, variant function and phenotype in SLC6A1-related disorders. This knowledge supports biology-informed variant interpretation and research on GAT1 function. All our data can be interactively explored in the SLC6A1 portal (https://slc6a1-portal.broadinstitute.org/).</jats:p>
    Scopus© Citations 3  3
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    Gene variant effects across sodium channelopathies predict function and guide precision therapy
    (2022)
    Andreas Brunklaus
    ;
    Tony Feng
    ;
    Tobias Brünger
    ;
    ;
    Henrike Heyne
    <jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>Pathogenic variants in the voltage-gated sodium channel gene family lead to early onset epilepsies, neurodevelopmental disorders, skeletal muscle channelopathies, peripheral neuropathies and cardiac arrhythmias. Disease-associated variants have diverse functional effects ranging from complete loss-of-function to marked gain-of-function. Therapeutic strategy is likely to depend on functional effect. Experimental studies offer important insights into channel function but are resource intensive and only performed in a minority of cases.</jats:p> <jats:p>Given the evolutionarily conserved nature of the sodium channel genes, we investigated whether similarities in biophysical properties between different voltage-gated sodium channels can predict function and inform precision treatment across sodium channelopathies. We performed a systematic literature search identifying functionally assessed variants in any of the nine voltage-gated sodium channel genes until 28 April 2021. We included missense variants that had been electrophysiologically characterized in mammalian cells in whole-cell patch-clamp recordings. We performed an alignment of linear protein sequences of all sodium channel genes and correlated variants by their overall functional effect on biophysical properties.</jats:p> <jats:p>Of 951 identified records, 437 sodium channel-variants met our inclusion criteria and were reviewed for functional properties. Of these, 141 variants were epilepsy-associated (SCN1/2/3/8A), 79 had a neuromuscular phenotype (SCN4/9/10/11A), 149 were associated with a cardiac phenotype (SCN5/10A) and 68 (16%) were considered benign. We detected 38 missense variant pairs with an identical disease-associated variant in a different sodium channel gene. Thirty-five out of 38 of those pairs resulted in similar functional consequences, indicating up to 92% biophysical agreement between corresponding sodium channel variants (odds ratio = 11.3; 95% confidence interval = 2.8 to 66.9; P &amp;lt; 0.001). Pathogenic missense variants were clustered in specific functional domains, whereas population variants were significantly more frequent across non-conserved domains (odds ratio = 18.6; 95% confidence interval = 10.9–34.4; P &amp;lt; 0.001). Pore-loop regions were frequently associated with loss-of-function variants, whereas inactivation sites were associated with gain-of-function (odds ratio = 42.1, 95% confidence interval = 14.5–122.4; P &amp;lt; 0.001), whilst variants occurring in voltage-sensing regions comprised a range of gain- and loss-of-function effects.</jats:p> <jats:p>Our findings suggest that biophysical characterisation of variants in one SCN-gene can predict channel function across different SCN-genes where experimental data are not available. The collected data represent the first gain- versus loss-of-function topological map of SCN proteins indicating shared patterns of biophysical effects aiding variant analysis and guiding precision therapy. We integrated our findings into a free online webtool to facilitate functional sodium channel gene variant interpretation (http://SCN-viewer.broadinstitute.org).</jats:p>
      3  1Scopus© Citations 63
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    Delineation of functionally essential protein regions for 242 neurodevelopmental genes
    (2022)
    Sumaiya Iqbal
    ;
    Tobias Brünger
    ;
    ;
    Marie Macnee
    ;
    Andreas Brunklaus
    <jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>Neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs), including severe paediatric epilepsy, autism and intellectual disabilities are heterogeneous conditions in which clinical genetic testing can often identify a pathogenic variant. For many of them, genetic therapies will be tested in this or the coming years in clinical trials. In contrast to first-generation symptomatic treatments, the new disease-modifying precision medicines require a genetic test-informed diagnosis before a patient can be enrolled in a clinical trial. However, even in 2022, most identified genetic variants in NDD genes are ‘variants of uncertain significance’. To safely enrol patients in precision medicine clinical trials, it is important to increase our knowledge about which regions in NDD-associated proteins can ‘tolerate’ missense variants and which ones are ‘essential’ and will cause a NDD when mutated. In addition, knowledge about functionally indispensable regions in the 3D structure context of proteins can also provide insights into the molecular mechanisms of disease variants.</jats:p> <jats:p>We developed a novel consensus approach that overlays evolutionary, and population based genomic scores to identify 3D essential sites (Essential3D) on protein structures. After extensive benchmarking of AlphaFold predicted and experimentally solved protein structures, we generated the currently largest expert curated protein structure set for 242 NDDs and identified 14 377 Essential3D sites across 189 gene disorders associated proteins. We demonstrate that the consensus annotation of Essential3D sites improves prioritization of disease mutations over single annotations. The identified Essential3D sites were enriched for functional features such as intermembrane regions or active sites and discovered key inter-molecule interactions in protein complexes that were otherwise not annotated. Using the currently largest autism, developmental disorders, and epilepsies exome sequencing studies including &amp;gt;360 000 NDD patients and population controls, we found that missense variants at Essential3D sites are 8-fold enriched in patients.</jats:p> <jats:p>In summary, we developed a comprehensive protein structure set for 242 NDDs and identified 14 377 Essential3D sites in these. All data are available at https://es-ndd.broadinstitute.org for interactive visual inspection to enhance variant interpretation and development of mechanistic hypotheses for 242 NDDs genes. The provided resources will enhance clinical variant interpretation and in silico drug target development for NDD-associated genes and encoded proteins.</jats:p>
      1  1Scopus© Citations 11
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    Conserved patterns across ion channels correlate with variant pathogenicity and clinical phenotypes
    (2022)
    Tobias Brünger
    ;
    ;
    Ludovica Montanucci
    ;
    Michael Nothnagel
    ;
    Rikke S Møller
    <jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>Clinically identified genetic variants in ion channels can be benign or cause disease by increasing or decreasing the protein function. As a consequence, therapeutic decision-making is challenging without molecular testing of each variant. Our biophysical knowledge of ion-channel structures and function is just emerging, and it is currently not well understood which amino acid residues cause disease when mutated.</jats:p> <jats:p>We sought to systematically identify biological properties associated with variant pathogenicity across all major voltage and ligand-gated ion-channel families. We collected and curated 3049 pathogenic variants from hundreds of neurodevelopmental and other disorders and 12 546 population variants for 30 ion channel or channel subunits for which a high-quality protein structure was available. Using a wide range of bioinformatics approaches, we computed 163 structural features and tested them for pathogenic variant enrichment. We developed a novel 3D spatial distance scoring approach that enables comparisons of pathogenic and population variant distribution across protein structures.</jats:p> <jats:p>We discovered and independently replicated that several pore residue properties and proximity to the pore axis were most significantly enriched for pathogenic variants compared to population variants. Using our 3D scoring approach, we showed that the strongest pathogenic variant enrichment was observed for pore-lining residues and alpha-helix residues within 5Å distance from the pore axis centre and not involved in gating. Within the subset of residues located at the pore, the hydrophobicity of the pore was the feature most strongly associated with variant pathogenicity. We also found an association between the identified properties and both clinical phenotypes and functional in vitro assays for voltage-gated sodium channels (SCN1A, SCN2A, SCN8A) and N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor (GRIN1, GRIN2A, GRIN2B) encoding genes. In an independent expert-curated dataset of 1422 neurodevelopmental disorder pathogenic patient variants and 679 electrophysiological experiments, we show that pore axis distance is associated with seizure age of onset and cognitive performance as well as differential gain versus loss-of-channel function.</jats:p> <jats:p>In summary, we identified biological properties associated with ion-channel malfunction and show that these are correlated with in vitro functional readouts and clinical phenotypes in patients with neurodevelopmental disorders. Our results suggest that clinical decision support algorithms that predict variant pathogenicity and function are feasible in the future.</jats:p>
      1Scopus© Citations 13  6
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      25Scopus© Citations 20
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    Total mutational load and clinical features as predictors of the metastatic status in lung adenocarcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma patients
    (2022)
    Karen Y. Oróstica
    ;
    Juan Saez-Hidalgo
    ;
    Pamela R. de Santiago
    ;
    ;
    Sebastian Contreras
    <jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:sec> <jats:title>Background</jats:title> <jats:p>Recently, extensive cancer genomic studies have revealed mutational and clinical data of large cohorts of cancer patients. For example, the Pan-Lung Cancer 2016 dataset (part of The Cancer Genome Atlas project), summarises the mutational and clinical profiles of different subtypes of Lung Cancer (LC). Mutational and clinical signatures have been used independently for tumour typification and prediction of metastasis in LC patients. Is it then possible to achieve better typifications and predictions when combining both data streams?</jats:p> </jats:sec><jats:sec> <jats:title>Methods</jats:title> <jats:p>In a cohort of 1144 Lung Adenocarcinoma (LUAD) and Lung Squamous Cell Carcinoma (LSCC) patients, we studied the number of missense mutations (hereafter, the Total Mutational Load TML) and distribution of clinical variables, for different classes of patients. Using the TML and different sets of clinical variables (tumour stage, age, sex, smoking status, and packs of cigarettes smoked per year), we built Random Forest classification models that calculate the likelihood of developing metastasis.</jats:p> </jats:sec><jats:sec> <jats:title>Results</jats:title> <jats:p>We found that LC patients different in age, smoking status, and tumour type had significantly different mean TMLs. Although TML was an informative feature, its effect was secondary to the "tumour stage" feature. However, its contribution to the classification is not redundant with the latter; models trained using both TML and tumour stage performed better than models trained using only one of these variables. We found that models trained in the entire dataset (i.e., without using dimensionality reduction techniques) and without resampling achieved the highest performance, with an F1 score of 0.64 (95%CrI [0.62, 0.66]).</jats:p> </jats:sec><jats:sec> <jats:title>Conclusions</jats:title> <jats:p>Clinical variables and TML should be considered together when assessing the likelihood of LC patients progressing to metastatic states, as the information these encode is not redundant. Altogether, we provide new evidence of the need for comprehensive diagnostic tools for metastasis.</jats:p> </jats:sec>
      2  1Scopus© Citations 3
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    Structural mapping of GABRB3 variants reveals genotype–phenotype correlations
    (2022)
    Katrine M. Johannesen
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    Sumaiya Iqbal
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    Milena Guazzi
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    Nazanin A. Mohammadi
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    Scopus© Citations 16  2
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    Analysing an allelic series of rare missense variants of <i>CACNA1I</i> in a Swedish schizophrenia cohort
    (2021)
    David Baez-Nieto
    ;
    Andrew Allen
    ;
    Seth Akers-Campbell
    ;
    Lingling Yang
    ;
    Nikita Budnik
    <jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>CACNA1I is implicated in the susceptibility to schizophrenia by large-scale genetic association studies of single nucleotide polymorphisms. However, the channelopathy of CACNA1I in schizophrenia is unknown. CACNA1I encodes CaV3.3, a neuronal voltage-gated calcium channel that underlies a subtype of T-type current that is important for neuronal excitability in the thalamic reticular nucleus and other regions of the brain. Here, we present an extensive functional characterization of 57 naturally occurring rare and common missense variants of CACNA1I derived from a Swedish schizophrenia cohort of more than 10 000 individuals. Our analysis of this allelic series of coding CACNA1I variants revealed that reduced CaV3.3 channel current density was the dominant phenotype associated with rare CACNA1I coding alleles derived from control subjects, whereas rare CACNA1I alleles from schizophrenia patients encoded CaV3.3 channels with altered responses to voltages. CACNA1I variants associated with altered current density primarily impact the ionic channel pore and those associated with altered responses to voltage impact the voltage-sensing domain. CaV3.3 variants associated with altered voltage dependence of the CaV3.3 channel and those associated with peak current density deficits were significantly segregated across affected and unaffected groups (Fisher’s exact test, P = 0.034). Our results, together with recent data from the SCHEMA (Schizophrenia Exome Sequencing Meta-Analysis) cohort, suggest that reduced CaV3.3 function may protect against schizophrenia risk in rare cases. We subsequently modelled the effect of the biophysical properties of CaV3.3 channel variants on thalamic reticular nucleus excitability and found that compared with common variants, ultrarare CaV3.3-coding variants derived from control subjects significantly decreased thalamic reticular nucleus excitability (P = 0.011). When all rare variants were analysed, there was a non-significant trend between variants that reduced thalamic reticular nucleus excitability and variants that either had no effect or increased thalamic reticular nucleus excitability across disease status. Taken together, the results of our functional analysis of an allelic series of &amp;gt;50 CACNA1I variants in a schizophrenia cohort reveal that loss of function of CaV3.3 is a molecular phenotype associated with reduced disease risk burden, and our approach may serve as a template strategy for channelopathies in polygenic disorders.</jats:p>
    Scopus© Citations 22  1
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    Development and Validation of a Prediction Model for Early Diagnosis of <i>SCN1A</i>-Related Epilepsies
    (2022)
    Andreas Brunklaus
    ;
    Eduardo Pérez-Palma
    ;
    Ismael Ghanty
    ;
    Ji Xinge
    ;
    Eva Brilstra
    <jats:sec><jats:title>Background and Objectives</jats:title><jats:p>Pathogenic variants in the neuronal sodium channel α1 subunit gene (<jats:italic>SCN1A</jats:italic>) are the most frequent monogenic cause of epilepsy. Phenotypes comprise a wide clinical spectrum, including severe childhood epilepsy; Dravet syndrome, characterized by drug-resistant seizures, intellectual disability, and high mortality; and the milder genetic epilepsy with febrile seizures plus (GEFS+), characterized by normal cognition. Early recognition of a child's risk for developing Dravet syndrome vs GEFS+ is key for implementing disease-modifying therapies when available before cognitive impairment emerges. Our objective was to develop and validate a prediction model using clinical and genetic biomarkers for early diagnosis of <jats:italic>SCN1A</jats:italic>-related epilepsies.</jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title>Methods</jats:title><jats:p>We performed a retrospective multicenter cohort study comprising data from patients with <jats:italic>SCN1A</jats:italic>-positive Dravet syndrome and patients with GEFS+ consecutively referred for genetic testing (March 2001–June 2020) including age at seizure onset and a newly developed <jats:italic>SCN1A</jats:italic> genetic score. A training cohort was used to develop multiple prediction models that were validated using 2 independent blinded cohorts. Primary outcome was the discriminative accuracy of the model predicting Dravet syndrome vs other GEFS+ phenotypes.</jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title>Results</jats:title><jats:p>A total of 1,018 participants were included. The frequency of Dravet syndrome was 616/743 (83%) in the training cohort, 147/203 (72%) in validation cohort 1, and 60/72 (83%) in validation cohort 2. A high <jats:italic>SCN1A</jats:italic> genetic score (133.4 [SD 78.5] vs 52.0 [SD 57.5]; <jats:italic>p</jats:italic> &lt; 0.001) and young age at onset (6.0 [SD 3.0] vs 14.8 [SD 11.8] months; <jats:italic>p</jats:italic> &lt; 0.001) were each associated with Dravet syndrome vs GEFS+. A combined <jats:italic>SCN1A</jats:italic> genetic score and seizure onset model separated Dravet syndrome from GEFS+ more effectively (area under the curve [AUC] 0.89 [95% CI 0.86–0.92]) and outperformed all other models (AUC 0.79–0.85; <jats:italic>p</jats:italic> &lt; 0.001). Model performance was replicated in both validation cohorts 1 (AUC 0.94 [95% CI 0.91–0.97]) and 2 (AUC 0.92 [95% CI 0.82–1.00]).</jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title>Discussion</jats:title><jats:p>The prediction model allows objective estimation at disease onset whether a child will develop Dravet syndrome vs GEFS+, assisting clinicians with prognostic counseling and decisions on early institution of precision therapies (<jats:ext-link xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" specific-use="external-ds" ext-link-type="uri" xlink:href="http://scn1a-prediction-model.broadinstitute.org/">http://scn1a-prediction-model.broadinstitute.org/</jats:ext-link>).</jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title>Classification of Evidence</jats:title><jats:p>This study provides Class II evidence that a combined <jats:italic>SCN1A</jats:italic> genetic score and seizure onset model distinguishes Dravet syndrome from other GEFS+ phenotypes.</jats:p></jats:sec>
      9Scopus© Citations 64