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Richardson, Andrea

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Richardson

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Andrea

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Richardson, Andrea

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2010 - 201514

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Author's Publications: search.filters.isAuthorOfPublication.5d236d0e-1834-4bec-bd30-8d4530a771bb

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Now showing 1 - 10 of 14
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    Tumor Mutation Burden Forecasts Outcome in Ovarian Cancer with BRCA1 or BRCA2 Mutations
    (Public Library of Science, 2013) Birkbak, Nicolai Juul; Kochupurakkal, Bose; Izarzugaza, Jose M. G.; Eklund, Aron C.; Li, Yang; Liu, Joyce; Szallasi, Zoltan; Matulonis, Ursula A.; Richardson, Andrea; Iglehart, J. Dirk; Wang, Zhigang C.
    Background: Increased number of single nucleotide substitutions is seen in breast and ovarian cancer genomes carrying disease-associated mutations in BRCA1 or BRCA2. The significance of these genome-wide mutations is unknown. We hypothesize genome-wide mutation burden mirrors deficiencies in DNA repair and is associated with treatment outcome in ovarian cancer. Methods and Results: The total number of synonymous and non-synonymous exome mutations (Nmut), and the presence of germline or somatic mutation in BRCA1 or BRCA2 (mBRCA) were extracted from whole-exome sequences of high-grade serous ovarian cancers from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA). Cox regression and Kaplan-Meier methods were used to correlate Nmut with chemotherapy response and outcome. Higher Nmut correlated with a better response to chemotherapy after surgery. In patients with mBRCA-associated cancer, low Nmut was associated with shorter progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS), independent of other prognostic factors in multivariate analysis. Patients with mBRCA-associated cancers and a high Nmut had remarkably favorable PFS and OS. The association with survival was similar in cancers with either BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutations. In cancers with wild-type BRCA, tumor Nmut was associated with treatment response in patients with no residual disease after surgery. Conclusions: Tumor Nmut was associated with treatment response and with both PFS and OS in patients with high-grade serous ovarian cancer carrying BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutations. In the TCGA cohort, low Nmut predicted resistance to chemotherapy, and for shorter PFS and OS, while high Nmut forecasts a remarkably favorable outcome in mBRCA-associated ovarian cancer. Our observations suggest that the total mutation burden coupled with BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutations in ovarian cancer is a genomic marker of prognosis and predictor of treatment response. This marker may reflect the degree of deficiency in BRCA-mediated pathways, or the extent of compensation for the deficiency by alternative mechanisms.
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    Signatures of mutational processes in human cancer
    (2013) Alexandrov, Ludmil B.; Nik-Zainal, Serena; Wedge, David C.; Aparicio, Samuel A.J.R.; Behjati, Sam; Biankin, Andrew V.; Bignell, Graham R.; Bolli, Niccolo; Borg, Ake; Børresen-Dale, Anne-Lise; Boyault, Sandrine; Burkhardt, Birgit; Butler, Adam P.; Caldas, Carlos; Davies, Helen R.; Desmedt, Christine; Eils, Roland; Eyfjörd, Jórunn Erla; Foekens, John A.; Greaves, Mel; Hosoda, Fumie; Hutter, Barbara; Ilicic, Tomislav; Imbeaud, Sandrine; Imielinsk, Marcin; Jäger, Natalie; Jones, David T.W.; Jones, David; Knappskog, Stian; Kool, Marcel; Lakhani, Sunil R.; López-Otín, Carlos; Martin, Sancha; Munshi, Nikhil; Nakamura, Hiromi; Northcott, Paul A.; Pajic, Marina; Papaemmanuil, Elli; Paradiso, Angelo; Pearson, John V.; Puente, Xose S.; Raine, Keiran; Ramakrishna, Manasa; Richardson, Andrea; Richter, Julia; Rosenstiel, Philip; Schlesner, Matthias; Schumacher, Ton N.; Span, Paul N.; Teague, Jon W.; Totoki, Yasushi; Tutt, Andrew N.J.; Valdés-Mas, Rafael; van Buuren, Marit M.; van ’t Veer, Laura; Vincent-Salomon, Anne; Waddell, Nicola; Yates, Lucy R.; Zucman-Rossi, Jessica; Futreal, P. Andrew; McDermott, Ultan; Lichter, Peter; Meyerson, Matthew; Grimmond, Sean M.; Siebert, Reiner; Campo, Elías; Shibata, Tatsuhiro; Pfister, Stefan M.; Campbell, Peter J.; Stratton, Michael R.
    All cancers are caused by somatic mutations. However, understanding of the biological processes generating these mutations is limited. The catalogue of somatic mutations from a cancer genome bears the signatures of the mutational processes that have been operative. Here, we analysed 4,938,362 mutations from 7,042 cancers and extracted more than 20 distinct mutational signatures. Some are present in many cancer types, notably a signature attributed to the APOBEC family of cytidine deaminases, whereas others are confined to a single class. Certain signatures are associated with age of the patient at cancer diagnosis, known mutagenic exposures or defects in DNA maintenance, but many are of cryptic origin. In addition to these genome-wide mutational signatures, hypermutation localized to small genomic regions, kataegis, is found in many cancer types. The results reveal the diversity of mutational processes underlying the development of cancer with potential implications for understanding of cancer etiology, prevention and therapy.
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    Digital Quantification of Gene Expression in Sequential Breast Cancer Biopsies Reveals Activation of an Immune Response
    (Public Library of Science, 2013) Jeselsohn, Rinath; Werner, Lillian; Regan, Meredith; Fatima, Aquila; Gilmore, Lauren; Collins, Laura; Beck, Andrew; Bailey, Shannon T.; He, Housheng Hansen; Buchwalter, Gilles; Brown, Myles; Iglehart, J. Dirk; Richardson, Andrea; Come, Steven
    Advancements in molecular biology have unveiled multiple breast cancer promoting pathways and potential therapeutic targets. Large randomized clinical trials remain the ultimate means of validating therapeutic efficacy, but they require large cohorts of patients and are lengthy and costly. A useful approach is to conduct a window of opportunity study in which patients are exposed to a drug pre-surgically during the interval between the core needle biopsy and the definitive surgery. These are non-therapeutic studies and the end point is not clinical or pathological response but rather evaluation of molecular changes in the tumor specimens that can predict response. However, since the end points of the non-therapeutic studies are biologic, it is critical to first define the biologic changes that occur in the absence of treatment. In this study, we compared the molecular profiles of breast cancer tumors at the time of the diagnostic biopsy versus the definitive surgery in the absence of any intervention using the Nanostring nCounter platform. We found that while the majority of the transcripts did not vary between the two biopsies, there was evidence of activation of immune related genes in response to the first biopsy and further investigations of the immune changes after a biopsy in early breast cancer seem warranted.
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    STAT3 Induction of miR-146b Forms a Feedback Loop to Inhibit the NF- B to IL-6 Signaling Axis and STAT3-Driven Cancer Phenotypes
    (American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), 2014) Xiang, Michael; Birkbak, N; Vafaizadeh, V.; Walker, Sarah; Yeh, Jennifer; Liu, Suhu; Kroll, Yasmin; Boldin, M.; Taganov, K.; Groner, B.; Richardson, Andrea; Frank, David
    Interleukin-6 (IL-6)–mediated activation of signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 (STAT3) is a mechanism by which chronic inflammation can contribute to cancer and is a common oncogenic event. We discovered a pathway, the loss of which is associated with persistent STAT3 activation in human cancer. We found that the gene encoding the tumor suppressor microRNA miR-146b is a direct STAT3 target gene, and its expression was increased in normal breast epithelial cells but decreased in tumor cells. Methylation of the miR-146b promoter, which inhibited STAT3-mediated induction of expression, was increased in primary breast cancers. Moreover, we found that miR-146b inhibited nuclear factor κB (NF-κB)–dependent production of IL-6, subsequent STAT3 activation, and IL-6/STAT3–driven migration and invasion in breast cancer cells, thereby establishing a negative feedback loop. In addition, higher expression of miR-146b was positively correlated with patient survival in breast cancer subtypes with increased IL6 expression and STAT3 phosphorylation. Our results identify an epigenetic mechanism of crosstalk between STAT3 and NF-κB relevant to constitutive STAT3 activation in malignancy and the role of inflammation in oncogenesis.
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    BRCA1 haploinsufficiency for replication stress suppression in primary cells
    (Nature Pub. Group, 2014) Pathania, Shailja; Bade, Sangeeta; Le Guillou, Morwenna; Burke, Karly; Reed, Rachel; Bowman-Colin, Christian; Su, Ying; Ting, David; Polyak, Kornelia; Richardson, Andrea; Feunteun, Jean; Garber, Judy; Livingston, David
    BRCA1—a breast and ovarian cancer suppressor gene—promotes genome integrity. To study the functionality of BRCA1 in the heterozygous state, we established a collection of primary human BRCA1+/+ and BRCA1mut/+ mammary epithelial cells and fibroblasts. Here we report that all BRCA1mut/+ cells exhibited multiple normal BRCA1 functions, including the support of homologous recombination- type double-strand break repair (HR-DSBR), checkpoint functions, centrosome number control, spindle pole formation, Slug expression and satellite RNA suppression. In contrast, the same cells were defective in stalled replication fork repair and/or suppression of fork collapse, that is, replication stress. These defects were rescued by reconstituting BRCA1mut/+ cells with wt BRCA1. In addition, we observed ‘conditional’ haploinsufficiency for HR-DSBR in BRCA1mut/+ cells in the face of replication stress. Given the importance of replication stress in epithelial cancer development and of an HR defect in breast cancer pathogenesis, both defects are candidate contributors to tumorigenesis in BRCA1-deficient mammary tissue.
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    Granulin, a novel STAT3-interacting protein, enhances STAT3 transcriptional function and correlates with poorer prognosis in breast cancer
    (Impact Journals LLC, 2015) Yeh, Jennifer E.; Kreimer, Simion; Walker, Sarah; Emori, Megan M.; Krystal, Hannah; Richardson, Andrea; Ivanov, Alexander R.; Frank, David
    Since the neoplastic phenotype of a cell is largely driven by aberrant gene expression patterns, increasing attention has been focused on transcription factors that regulate critical mediators of tumorigenesis such as signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 (STAT3). As proteins that interact with STAT3 may be key in addressing how STAT3 contributes to cancer pathogenesis, we took a proteomics approach to identify novel STAT3-interacting proteins. We performed mass spectrometry-based profiling of STAT3-containing complexes from breast cancer cells that have constitutively active STAT3 and are dependent on STAT3 function for survival. We identified granulin (GRN) as a novel STAT3-interacting protein that was necessary for both constitutive and maximal leukemia inhibitory factor (LIF)induced STAT3 transcriptional activity. GRN enhanced STAT3 DNA binding and also increased the time-integrated amount of LIF-induced STAT3 activation in breast cancer cells. Furthermore, silencing GRN neutralized STAT3-mediated tumorigenic phenotypes including viability, clonogenesis, and migratory capacity. In primary breast cancer samples, GRN mRNA levels were positively correlated with STAT3 gene expression signatures and with reduced patient survival. These studies identify GRN as a functionally important STAT3-interacting protein that may serve as an important prognostic biomarker and potential therapeutic target in breast cancer.
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    Pan-cancer analysis of genomic scar signatures associated with homologous recombination deficiency suggests novel indications for existing cancer drugs
    (BioMed Central, 2015) Marquard, Andrea M; Eklund, Aron C; Joshi, Tejal; Krzystanek, Marcin; Favero, Francesco; Wang, Zhigang C.; Richardson, Andrea; Silver, Daniel P; Szallasi, Zoltan; Birkbak, Nicolai J
    Background: Ovarian and triple-negative breast cancers with BRCA1 or BRCA2 loss are highly sensitive to treatment with PARP inhibitors and platinum-based cytotoxic agents and show an accumulation of genomic scars in the form of gross DNA copy number aberrations. Cancers without BRCA1 or BRCA2 loss but with accumulation of similar genomic scars also show increased sensitivity to platinum-based chemotherapy. Therefore, reliable biomarkers to identify DNA repair-deficient cancers prior to treatment may be useful for directing patients to platinum chemotherapy and possibly PARP inhibitors. Recently, three SNP array-based signatures of chromosomal instability were published that each quantitate a distinct type of genomic scar considered likely to be caused by improper DNA repair. They measure telomeric allelic imbalance (named NtAI), large scale transition (named LST), and loss of heterozygosity (named HRD-LOH), and it is suggested that these signatures may act as biomarkers for the state of DNA repair deficiency in a given cancer. Results: We explored the pan-cancer distribution of scores of the three signatures utilizing a panel of 5371 tumors representing 15 cancer types from The Cancer Genome Atlas, and found a good correlation between scores of the three signatures (Spearman’s ρ 0.73–0.87). In addition we found that cancer types ordinarily receiving platinum as standard of care have higher median scores of all three signatures. Interestingly, we also found that smaller subpopulations of high-scoring tumors exist in most cancer types, including those for which platinum chemotherapy is not standard therapy. Conclusions: Within several cancer types that are not ordinarily treated with platinum chemotherapy, we identified tumors with high levels of the three genomic biomarkers. These tumors represent identifiable subtypes of patients which may be strong candidates for clinical trials with PARP inhibitors or platinum-based chemotherapeutic regimens. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s40364-015-0033-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
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    Taxonomy of breast cancer based on normal cell phenotype predicts outcome
    (American Society for Clinical Investigation, 2014) Santagata, Sandro; Thakkar, Ankita; Ergonul, Ayse; Wang, Bin; Woo, Terri; Hu, Rong; Harrell, J. Chuck; McNamara, George; Schwede, Matthew; Culhane, Aedin; Kindelberger, David; Rodig, Scott; Richardson, Andrea; Schnitt, Stuart; Tamimi, Rulla; Ince, Tan A.
    Accurate classification is essential for understanding the pathophysiology of a disease and can inform therapeutic choices. For hematopoietic malignancies, a classification scheme based on the phenotypic similarity between tumor cells and normal cells has been successfully used to define tumor subtypes; however, use of normal cell types as a reference by which to classify solid tumors has not been widely emulated, in part due to more limited understanding of epithelial cell differentiation compared with hematopoiesis. To provide a better definition of the subtypes of epithelial cells comprising the breast epithelium, we performed a systematic analysis of a large set of breast epithelial markers in more than 15,000 normal breast cells, which identified 11 differentiation states for normal luminal cells. We then applied information from this analysis to classify human breast tumors based on normal cell types into 4 major subtypes, HR0–HR3, which were differentiated by vitamin D, androgen, and estrogen hormone receptor (HR) expression. Examination of 3,157 human breast tumors revealed that these HR subtypes were distinct from the current classification scheme, which is based on estrogen receptor, progesterone receptor, and human epidermal growth factor receptor 2. Patient outcomes were best when tumors expressed all 3 hormone receptors (subtype HR3) and worst when they expressed none of the receptors (subtype HR0). Together, these data provide an ontological classification scheme associated with patient survival differences and provides actionable insights for treating breast tumors.
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    Haploinsufficiency for BRCA1 leads to cell-type-specific genomic instability and premature senescence
    (Nature Pub. Group, 2015) Sedic, Maja; Skibinski, Adam; Brown, Nelson; Gallardo, Mercedes; Mulligan, Peter; Martinez, Paula; Keller, Patricia J.; Glover, Eugene; Richardson, Andrea; Cowan, Janet; Toland, Amanda E.; Ravichandran, Krithika; Riethman, Harold; Naber, Stephen P.; Naar, Anders; Blasco, Maria A.; Hinds, Philip W.; Kuperwasser, Charlotte
    Although BRCA1 function is essential for maintaining genomic integrity in all cell types, it is unclear why increased risk of cancer in individuals harbouring deleterious mutations in BRCA1 is restricted to only a select few tissues. Here we show that human mammary epithelial cells (HMECs) from BRCA1-mutation carriers (BRCA1mut/+) exhibit increased genomic instability and rapid telomere erosion in the absence of tumour-suppressor loss. Furthermore, we uncover a novel form of haploinsufficiency-induced senescence (HIS) specific to epithelial cells, which is triggered by pRb pathway activation rather than p53 induction. HIS and telomere erosion in HMECs correlate with misregulation of SIRT1 leading to increased levels of acetylated pRb as well as acetylated H4K16 both globally and at telomeric regions. These results identify a novel form of cellular senescence and provide a potential molecular basis for the rapid cell- and tissue- specific predisposition of breast cancer development associated with BRCA1 haploinsufficiency.
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    RelA-Induced Interferon Response Negatively Regulates Proliferation
    (Public Library of Science (PLoS), 2015) Kochupurakkal, Bose; Wang, Zhigang C.; Hua, Tony; Culhane, Aedin; Rodig, Scott; Rajkovic-Molek, Koraljka; Lazaro, Jean-Bernard; Richardson, Andrea; Biswas, Debajit; Iglehart, James
    Both oncogenic and tumor-suppressor activities are attributed to the Nuclear Factor kappa B (NF-kB) pathway. Moreover, NF-kB may positively or negatively regulate proliferation. The molecular determinants of these opposing roles of NF-kB are unclear. Using primary human mammary epithelial cells (HMEC) as a model, we show that increased RelA levels and consequent increase in basal transcriptional activity of RelA induces IRF1, a target gene. Induced IRF1 upregulates STAT1 and IRF7, and in consort, these factors induce the expression of interferon response genes. Activation of the interferon pathway down-regulates CDK4 and up-regulates p27 resulting in Rb hypo-phosphorylation and cell cycle arrest. Stimulation of HMEC with IFN-γ elicits similar phenotypic and molecular changes suggesting that basal activity of RelA and IFN-γ converge on IRF1 to regulate proliferation. The anti-proliferative RelA-IRF1-CDK4 signaling axis is retained in ER+/HER2- breast tumors analyzed by The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA). Using immuno-histochemical analysis of breast tumors, we confirm the negative correlation between RelA levels and proliferation rate in ER+/HER2- breast tumors. These findings attribute an anti-proliferative tumorsuppressor role to basal RelA activity. Inactivation of Rb, down-regulation of RelA or IRF1, or upregulation of CDK4 or IRF2 rescues the RelA-IRF1-CDK4 induced proliferation arrest in HMEC and are points of disruption in aggressive tumors. Activity of the RelA-IRF1-CDK4 axis may explain favorable response to CDK4/6 inhibition observed in patients with ER+ Rb competent tumors.