Clinical Sequencing: Whole Exome Sequencing of CLL8 Cohort

Large-scale whole-exome sequencing (WES) of primary tumor samples enables the unbiased discovery of recurrent putative driver events and patterns of clonal evolution. We report the identification of 44 recurrently mutated genes and 11 recurrent CNVs through the WES of 538 chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) and matched germline DNAs. These include previously unrecognized cancer drivers (e.g., RPS15, IKZF3), and collectively identify nuclear export, MYC activity and MAPK signaling as central pathways affected by somatic mutation in CLL. A clonality analysis of this large dataset further enabled the reconstruction of temporal relationships between these driver events. Several drivers were associated with shorter progression-free survival (PFS) in 280 samples that were collected prior to... (for more see dbGaP study page.)