Discovery of Non-ETS Gene Fusions in Human Prostate Cancer using Next Generation RNA Sequencing

Half of prostate cancers harbor gene fusions between TMPRSS2 and members of the ETS transcription factor family. To date little is known about the presence of non-ETS fusion events in prostate cancer. We employed next-generation transcriptome sequencing (RNA-Seq) in order to explore the whole transcriptome of 25 human prostate cancer samples for the presence of chimeric fusion transcripts. We generated more than 1 billion sequence reads and used a novel computational approach (FusionSeq) in order to identify novel gene fusion candidates with high confidence. In total, we discovered and characterized seven new cancer-specific gene fusions, two involving the ETS genes ETV1 and ERG, and five involving non-ETS genes such as CDKN1A (p21), CD9 and IKBKB (IKK-beta), genes known to exhibit key biological roles in cellular homeostasis or assumed to be critical in tumorigenesis of other tumor entities, as well as the oncogene PIGU and the tumor suppressor gene RSRC2... (for more see dbGaP study page.)