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Reposted by Charlotte Brierley

MRC Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine @imm.ox.ac.uk · Jun 10

NEW: Researchers at the MRC Molecular Haematology Unit, led by @ckbrierley.bsky.social & @adammead.bsky.social, have uncovered a potential new therapeutic target in BP-MPN - a particularly aggressive type of leukaemia.
🧪🧬

Read more:

@oxfordbrc.bsky.social | @rdm.ox.ac.uk | @medsci.ox.ac.uk

New research reveals druggable target arising from chromosomal rearrangement in aggressive leukaemia

Researchers at the University of Oxford have uncovered a potential new therapeutic target in a particularly aggressive and hard-to-treat form of leukaemia.

www.imm.ox.ac.uk

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Charlotte Brierley @ckbrierley.bsky.social · Jun 10

And - above all - we remain indebted to the patients who contributed samples and inspired this work. FIN.

Charlotte Brierley @ckbrierley.bsky.social · Jun 10

We are grateful for fantastic support from institutions and funders, critical to enabling this work:
‪@cancerresearchuk.org‬ @leukaemiauk.bsky.social‬
@wellcometrust.bsky.social‬ @imm.ox.ac.uk‬
@rdm.ox.ac.uk‬ ‪@mskcancercenter.bsky.social‬ @stjuderesearch.bsky.social‬

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Charlotte Brierley @ckbrierley.bsky.social · Jun 10

Thank you to reviewers for committing their time and thoughtful comments to the manuscript, and to Safia Danovi for a smooth editorial process.

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Charlotte Brierley @ckbrierley.bsky.social · Jun 10

It truly took a village to deliver this project, and would not have been possible without so many wonderful colleagues and collaborators,
@giuliaorlandogo.bsky.social Bon Ham Yip, Jeremy Wen,
@anton-henssen.bsky.social @antoniorromera.bsky.social and so many others not (yet!) on 🦋

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Charlotte Brierley @ckbrierley.bsky.social · Jun 10

With huge thanks to my supervisors and mentors for their boundless enthusiasm and support: Adam Mead, ‪@bethpsaila.bsky.social‬, Elli Papaemmanuil and John Crispino.

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Charlotte Brierley @ckbrierley.bsky.social · Jun 10

Please do check out the full paper for all the detail:
shorturl.at/94s5S ‪@natgenet.nature.com‬

We hope the insights generated from this study will pave the way to clinical trials of DYRK1A inhibitors - and ultimately improve outcomes for patients with this devastating disease. 15/n

Chromothripsis-associated chromosome 21 amplification orchestrates transformation to blast-phase MPN through targetable overexpression of DYRK1A - Nature Genetics

Multiomic analysis of blast-phase myeloproliferative neoplasms identifies a chromosome 21 amplicon harboring DYRK1A as a clonal and therapeutically targetable event in around a quarter of cases.

shorturl.at

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Charlotte Brierley @ckbrierley.bsky.social · Jun 10

How might DYRK1A drive disease transformation in BP-MPN? Through a series of functional and mechanistic assays, we show that DYRK1A downregulates DNA repair, while concomitantly promoting cell survival by amplifying JAK STAT signaling - and that this axis is targetable. 14/n

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Charlotte Brierley @ckbrierley.bsky.social · Jun 10

DYRK1A is a serine threonine kinase with roles in cell proliferation and DNA repair. We demonstrate that genetic or pharmacological downregulation of DYRK1A reduces BPMPN cell line and primary patient cell viability and proliferation in vitro and in vivo. 13/n

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Charlotte Brierley @ckbrierley.bsky.social · Jun 10

But which gene(s) in the 2.7Mb minimally amplified region might be mediating the effect? Multiomic analyses in single cell and bulk comparing chr21amp with non-chr21amp demonstrated that of the 24 genes, only one was differentially expressed and differentially accessible -DYRK1A! 12/n

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Charlotte Brierley @ckbrierley.bsky.social · Jun 10

- which was nicely corroborated by timing the chr21amp event on WGS against somatic mutations in the amplified segments - confirming that chr21amp occurred after JAK2 or TP53 as the final clonal event prior to disease transformation and sample collection. 11/n

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Charlotte Brierley @ckbrierley.bsky.social · Jun 10

Leveraging TARGET-seq, an allele-specific resolution approach to single cell genotyping in conjunction with the single cell copy number calling algorithm numbat (developed by ‪@gaoteng.bsky.social‬), enabled inference of clonal phylogeny - 10/n

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Charlotte Brierley @ckbrierley.bsky.social · Jun 10

..., while metaphase FISH validated the event as intrachromosomal. 9/n

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Charlotte Brierley @ckbrierley.bsky.social · Jun 10

With help from a fantastic collaboration with
@isabl_io we analysed tumour-only whole genome sequencing to demonstrate that each case demonstrated a unique pattern of genomic arrangement with a shared region of maximal amplification, and features of chromothripsis 8/n

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Charlotte Brierley @ckbrierley.bsky.social · Jun 10

Chr21amp was a highly adverse biomarker, with not a single patient surviving to a year, and was associated with genomic instability across the genome. 7/n

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Charlotte Brierley @ckbrierley.bsky.social · Jun 10

To our surprise, in a subset of chr21amp, the event was characterised by oscillating copy number with regions of high amplification - features in keeping with chromothripsis! 6/n

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Charlotte Brierley @ckbrierley.bsky.social · Jun 10

See beautiful work by
@isidrolauscher.bsky.social‬ and ‪@peterlylab.bsky.social‬ outlining incidence, causes, and molecular dependencies.
go.nature.com/3No51B6 5/n

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Charlotte Brierley @ckbrierley.bsky.social · Jun 10

Chromothripsis, the shattering and haphazard repair of a chromosome after mitotic error, is a driver of somatic evolution and found in ~35% of all human cancers, but has not to date been shown to be a major player in myeloid malignancy. 4/n

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Charlotte Brierley @ckbrierley.bsky.social · Jun 10

We set out to comprehensively profile diagnostic samples from 64 blast phase MPN patients. Deploying a high density SNP array alongside next generation sequencing, we found that cases were mutationally diverse, but identified recurrent chr21q amplification ('chr21amp') in 25%. 3/n

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Charlotte Brierley @ckbrierley.bsky.social · Jun 10

Leukaemic transformation in myeloproliferative neoplasms is the most feared complication of the MPNs. Here, a slow-growing clonal, chronic disorder transforms into a highly aggressive malignancy, characterised by genetic instability and a very poor response to treatment. 2/n

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Charlotte Brierley @ckbrierley.bsky.social · Jun 10

🚨🚨Paper out! 🚨🚨

Delighted to share our work, now published in ‪@natgenet.nature.com‬ 🧬!
shorturl.at/94s5S

We identified a targetable, chromothripsis-associated genetic event in blast phase (BP) MPN, a particularly poor prognostic subtype of acute leukaemia. 1/n

Illustration: Hratch Arbach
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Charlotte Brierley @ckbrierley.bsky.social · Dec 11

Just survived this process to get to #ASH24! I feel you - a minor miracle I made it, along with remembering the school Xmas jumper day and a 1000 other bits. Failure to Out-of-office here too 😂

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Charlotte Brierley @ckbrierley.bsky.social · Dec 7

The Splash @ASH! Stepping out of my comfort zone to flex a fledgling journalistic muscle. Many of the
#ASH24 community have been generous in giving time for interviews and discussion. Now looking fwd to meeting folks in person - and the fab editorial team
#ASHNewsDaily! @ash-hematology.bsky.social

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Charlotte Brierley @ckbrierley.bsky.social · Dec 7

Blue skies (perfect for a first post over here 🦋)and beautiful views over Greenland on a plane brimming with haematologists. A peaceful moment ahead of the tumult!
#ASH24

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