Abstract
5–10% of total prostate cancer (PCa) cases are hereditary. Particularly, immune checkpoint inhibitor-sensitive tandem duplicator phenotype (TDP) accounts for 6.9% of PCa cases, whereas genetic susceptibility genes remain completely unknown. We identified a Chinese family with two PCa patients, in which the PCa phenotype co-segregated with a rare germline variant EGFRR831H. Patient-derived conditionally reprogrammed cells (CRC) exhibited increased EGFR and AKT phosphorylation, and a sensitivity to EGFR antagonist Afatinib in migration assays, suggesting the EGFR allele was constitutively active. Both EGFRR831H-mutant tumours contained biallelic CDK12 inactivation, together with prominent tandem duplication across the genome. These somatic mutations could be detected in urine before surgery. Analysis of public databases showed a significant correlation between the mutation status of EGFR and CDK12. Taken together, our genetic and functional analyses identified a previously undescribed link between EGFR and PCa.
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Acknowledgements
We thank the patients and their family members for participating in our study. We gratefully acknowledge excellent technical assistance provided by Ms. Yuan Zhu, Ms. Shanshan Zhang, and Ms. Yayun Fang from Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University. We would like to acknowledge the TCGA and COSMIC databases for providing use of data free of charge. We also thank International Science Editing (http://www.internationalscienceediting.com) for editing this manuscript.
Funding
This study was supported in part by grants from the Health commission of Hubei Province scientific research project (WJ2019H080), Chinese Central Special Fund for Local Science and Technology Development of Hubei Province (2018ZYYD023), Science and Technology Department of Hubei Province Key Project (2018ACA159), and Wuhan Science and Technology Bureau Key Project (2018061005132294). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
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All PCa patients, family members of the PCa pedigree, and additional cancer patients, provided written informed consent. All study procedures were performed in accordance with the ethical standards of the Institutional Ethics Review Committee.
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Qian, K., Wang, G., Ju, L. et al. A novel germline EGFR variant p.R831H causes predisposition to familial CDK12-mutant prostate cancer with tandem duplicator phenotype. Oncogene 39, 6871–6878 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41388-020-01476-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41388-020-01476-9
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