TY - JOUR A1 - Marquardt, André A1 - Kollmannsberger, Philip A1 - Krebs, Markus A1 - Argentiero, Antonella A1 - Knott, Markus A1 - Solimando, Antonio Giovanni A1 - Kerscher, Alexander Georg T1 - Visual clustering of transcriptomic data from primary and metastatic tumors — dependencies and novel pitfalls JF - Genes N2 - Personalized oncology is a rapidly evolving area and offers cancer patients therapy options that are more specific than ever. However, there is still a lack of understanding regarding transcriptomic similarities or differences of metastases and corresponding primary sites. Applying two unsupervised dimension reduction methods (t-Distributed Stochastic Neighbor Embedding (t-SNE) and Uniform Manifold Approximation and Projection (UMAP)) on three datasets of metastases (n = 682 samples) with three different data transformations (unprocessed, log10 as well as log10 + 1 transformed values), we visualized potential underlying clusters. Additionally, we analyzed two datasets (n = 616 samples) containing metastases and primary tumors of one entity, to point out potential familiarities. Using these methods, no tight link between the site of resection and cluster formation outcome could be demonstrated, or for datasets consisting of solely metastasis or mixed datasets. Instead, dimension reduction methods and data transformation significantly impacted visual clustering results. Our findings strongly suggest data transformation to be considered as another key element in the interpretation of visual clustering approaches along with initialization and different parameters. Furthermore, the results highlight the need for a more thorough examination of parameters used in the analysis of clusters. KW - visual clustering KW - t-SNE KW - UMAP KW - transcriptomic analysis KW - cancer KW - metastasis Y1 - 2022 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-281872 SN - 2073-4425 VL - 13 IS - 8 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Mainz, Laura A1 - Sarhan, Mohamed A. F. E. A1 - Roth, Sabine A1 - Sauer, Ursula A1 - Maurus, Katja A1 - Hartmann, Elena M. A1 - Seibert, Helen-Desiree A1 - Rosenwald, Andreas A1 - Diefenbacher, Markus E. A1 - Rosenfeldt, Mathias T. T1 - Autophagy blockage reduces the incidence of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma in the context of mutant Trp53 JF - Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology N2 - Macroautophagy (hereafter referred to as autophagy) is a homeostatic process that preserves cellular integrity. In mice, autophagy regulates pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) development in a manner dependent on the status of the tumor suppressor gene Trp53. Studies published so far have investigated the impact of autophagy blockage in tumors arising from Trp53-hemizygous or -homozygous tissue. In contrast, in human PDACs the tumor suppressor gene TP53 is mutated rather than allelically lost, and TP53 mutants retain pathobiological functions that differ from complete allelic loss. In order to better represent the patient situation, we have investigated PDAC development in a well-characterized genetically engineered mouse model (GEMM) of PDAC with mutant Trp53 (Trp53\(^{R172H}\)) and deletion of the essential autophagy gene Atg7. Autophagy blockage reduced PDAC incidence but had no impact on survival time in the subset of animals that formed a tumor. In the absence of Atg7, non-tumor-bearing mice reached a similar age as animals with malignant disease. However, the architecture of autophagy-deficient, tumor-free pancreata was effaced, normal acinar tissue was largely replaced with low-grade pancreatic intraepithelial neoplasias (PanINs) and insulin expressing islet β-cells were reduced. Our data add further complexity to the interplay between Atg7 inhibition and Trp53 status in tumorigenesis. KW - pancreatic cancer KW - autophagy KW - p53 KW - metastasis KW - ATG7 Y1 - 2022 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-266005 SN - 2296-634X VL - 10 ER -