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DNA Damage Repair Classifier Defines Distinct Groups in Hepatocellular Carcinoma. Cancers (Basel) 2022 Sep 01;14(17)

Date

09/10/2022

Pubmed ID

36077818

Pubmed Central ID

PMC9454479

DOI

10.3390/cancers14174282

Scopus ID

2-s2.0-85137823991 (requires institutional sign-in at Scopus site)   3 Citations

Abstract

DNA repair pathways have been associated with variability in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) clinical outcomes, but the mechanism through which DNA repair varies as a function of liver regeneration and other HCC characteristics is poorly understood. We curated a panel of 199 genes representing 15 DNA repair pathways to identify DNA repair expression classes and evaluate their associations with liver features and clinicopathologic variables in The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) HCC study. We identified two groups in HCC, defined by low or high expression across all DNA repair pathways. The low-repair group had lower grade and retained the expression of classical liver markers, whereas the high-repair group had more clinically aggressive features, increased p53 mutant-like gene expression, and high liver regenerative gene expression. These pronounced features overshadowed the variation in the low-repair subset, but when considered separately, the low-repair samples included three subgroups: L1, L2, and L3. L3 had high DNA repair expression with worse progression-free (HR 1.24, 95% CI 0.81-1.91) and overall (HR 1.63, 95% CI 0.98-2.71) survival. High-repair outcomes were also significantly worse compared with the L1 and L2 groups. HCCs vary in DNA repair expression, and a subset of tumors with high regeneration profoundly disrupts liver biology and poor prognosis.

Author List

Smith MA, Van Alsten SC, Walens A, Damrauer JS, Maduekwe UN, Broaddus RR, Love MI, Troester MA, Hoadley KA

Author

Ugwuji N. Maduekwe MD Associate Dean, Associate Professor in the Surgery department at Medical College of Wisconsin