RNA-seq of primary NB. Next-generation RNA sequencing of primary neuroblastoma

Neuroblastoma is a tumor of early childhood characterized by heterogeneous clinical courses. Amplification of the MYCN oncogene is a marker of poor patient outcome in this disease. Here, we investigated the MYCN-driven transcriptome of 20 primary neuroblastomas with and without MYCN amplification using next-generation RNA sequencing and compared the results to those from an in vitro cell model for inducible MYCN (SH-EP MYCN-ER). Transcriptome sequencing produced 30–90 million mappable reads for each dataset. Pathway analyses suggested transcriptomal upregulation of mTOR-related genes by MYCN. We conclude that next-generation RNA sequencing allows for the identification of MYCN regulated transcripts in neuroblastoma.