Abstract
Analysis of 501 melanoma exomes identified RASA2, encoding a RasGAP, as a tumor-suppressor gene mutated in 5% of melanomas. Recurrent loss-of-function mutations in RASA2 were found to increase RAS activation, melanoma cell growth and migration. RASA2 expression was lost in ≥30% of human melanomas and was associated with reduced patient survival. These findings identify RASA2 inactivation as a melanoma driver and highlight the importance of RasGAPs in cancer.
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Acknowledgements
We thank T. Wiesel for graphical assistance. This work was supported by the Intramural Research Programs of the National Human Genome Research Institute and the National Cancer Institute, as well as by program grants of the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) and Cancer Institute NSW. Y.S. is supported by the Israel Science Foundation through grants 1604/13 and 877/13, the European Research Council (ERC; StG-335377), the ERC under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant agreement 677645), the Henry Chanoch Krenter Institute for Biomedical Imaging and Genomics, the estate of Alice Schwarz-Gardos, the estate of John Hunter, the Knell Family, the Peter and Patricia Gruber Award and the Hamburger Family. I.U. is supported by a grant from the Rising Tide Foundation. N.K.H., K.D.-R. and R.A.S. are supported by fellowships from the NHMRC. A.L.P. is supported by Cure Cancer Australia. Support from the Melanoma Institute Australia is also gratefully acknowledged. We thank the TCGA Research Network for generating some of the data sets.
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R.A., N.Q., R.E., A.K.-P., J.J.G. and Y.S. designed the study. J.M., A.E., J.S.W., J.J.G., K.D.-R., P.J., A.L.P., N.W., G.J.M., R.A.S., N.K.H. and S.A.R. collected and analyzed the melanoma samples. S.S., R.R., J.C.L., J.K., S.B.-D. and I.U. analyzed the genetic data. R.A., R.E., S.W.-K., V.K.H., Y.H. and J.M. performed the functional experiments and analyzed the data. A.D.P. and M.Y.N. performed the structural analysis. All authors contributed to the final version of the manuscript.
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Supplementary information
Supplementary Text and Figures
Supplementary Figures 1–9 and Supplementary Tables 4–8. (PDF 1259 kb)
Supplementary Table 1
Somatic mutations identified in 501 melanoma whole exomes and whole genomes. (XLSX 68530 kb)
Supplementary Table 2
Statistical calculation of significance of the somatic mutations identified in 499 melanoma whole exomes/genomes. (XLSX 522 kb)
Supplementary Table 3
Mutations identified in samples with RASA2 mutations. (XLSX 201151 kb)
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Arafeh, R., Qutob, N., Emmanuel, R. et al. Recurrent inactivating RASA2 mutations in melanoma. Nat Genet 47, 1408–1410 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/ng.3427
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/ng.3427
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