Exome sequencing of glioblastoma-derived cancer stem cells reveals rare clinically relevant frameshift deletion in MLLT1 gene

Background: Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) is a heterogeneous CNS neoplasm which causes significant morbidity and mortality. One reason for the poor prognostic outcome of GBM is attributed to the presence of cancer stem cells (CSC) which confer resistance against standard chemo- and radiotherapeutics modalities. Two types of GBM-associated CSC were isolated from the same patient: tumor core- (c-CSC) and peritumor tissue-derived cancer stem cells (p-CSC). Our experiments are focused on glioblastoma–IDH-wild type, and no disease-defining alterations were present in histone, BRAF or other genes. Methods: In the present study, potential differences in genetic variants between c-CSC versus p-CSC derived from four GBM patients were investigated with the aims of (1) comparing the exome sequences between all the c-CSC or p-CSC to identify the common variants; (2) identifying the variants affecting the function of genes known to be involved in cancer origin and development. Results: By comparative analyses, we identified common gene single nucleotide variants (SNV) in all GBM c-CSC and p-CSC, a potentially deleterious variant was a frameshift deletion at Gln461fs in the MLLT1 gene, that was encountered only in p-CSC samples with different allelic frequency. Conclusions: We discovered a potentially harmful frameshift deletion at Gln461fs in the MLLT1 gene. Further investigation is required to confirm the presence of the identified mutations in patient tissue samples, as well as the significance of the frameshift mutation in the MLLT1 gene on GBM biology and response to therapy based on genomic functional experiments.