Pan-cancer characterisation of the commonalities and differences of W-CIN and S-CIN

Our Research Unit addresses an important question on the origin of chromosome instability (CIN), which causes structural as well as numerical chromosome aberrations. Importantly, CIN and increased levels of chromosome aberrations are closely associated with many human diseases including cancer, neurodegenerative diseases and age-related syndromes and can act as key drivers for disease development and progression. An important condition that causes structural chromosome instability (S-CIN) leading ...

Replication stress (RS) and chromosomal instability (CIN) are commonly observed features of cancer cells. RS has a destabilizing effect on the genome and, vice versa, whole chromosome aneuploidy as a result of CIN can induce a RS response. Our preliminary data analysis of cancer genomic data suggests a tendency of whole chromosome CIN (W-CIN) to co-occur with structural CIN (S-CIN), whilst S-CIN can also appear in numerical stable tumors. We also found a significant positive correlation of mRNA ...

Many cancer cells are chromosomally unstable, a phenotype describing a tendency for accumulating chromosomal aberrations. Entire chromosomes tend to be gained or lost, which is called whole chromosome instability (W-CIN). Structural chromosomal instability (S-CIN) describes an increased rate of gaining, losing or translocating smaller parts of chromosomes. Here we analyse data from 33 cancer types to find differences and commonalities between W-CIN and S-CIN. We find, that W-CIN is strongly linked ...