Genetic and epigenetic profiling identifies two distinct classes of spinal meningiomas

Spinal meningiomas account for 1.2-12% of all meningiomas and 25-45% of all spinal tumours. About 20% of intracranial, but also 4.6% of spinal meningiomas recur and require additional treatment. The classification of intracranial meningiomas has evolved considerably in recent years and uses genetic [1,2,4] as well as epigenetic parameters [3,5] in order to more precisely predict the patients’ prognosis and to lay the ground for therapeutic regiments that are adapted to the aggressiveness of a patient’s tumor. On the other hand, spinal meningiomas are missing in many of the large cohorts that were gathered for the molecular profiling of meningiomas. Also, they have never been thoroughly analyzed separately, and their classification still relies on histopathological findings solely. We analysed 65 tumour samples from 63 patients, who had histologically proven spinal meningioma to perform genetic and epigenetic profiling. Clinical features are described in Supplementary Table 1, online resource. T-distributed Stochastic Neighbor Embedding (t-SNE) analysis of genome-wide DNA methylation data shows that most spinal meningiomas separate from cranial meningiomas (Fig. 1A&B) and form two distinct clusters. 65 tumor samples of spinal meningiomas from 63 patients with histologically confirmed spinal meningioma. 3 samples from recurrent spinal meningiomas.