Analysis of mucosal melanoma whole-genome landscapes reveals clinically relevant genomic aberrations.

PURPOSE: Unlike advances in the genomics-driven precision treatment of cutaneous melanomas, the poor current understanding of the molecular basis of mucosal melanomas (MMs) has hindered such progress for MM patients. Thus, we sought to characterize the genomic landscape of MM to identify genomic alterations with prognostic and/or therapeutic implications.

EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN: Whole-genome sequencing (WGS) was performed on 65 MM samples, including 63 paired tumor blood samples and 2 matched lymph node metastases, with a further ddPCR-based validation study of an independent MM cohort (n = 80). Guided by these molecular insights, the FDA-approved CDK4/6 inhibitor palbociclib was tested in a MM patient-derived xenograft (PDX) trial.

RESULTS: Besides the identification of well-recognized driver mutations of BRAF (3.1%), RAS family (6.2%), NF1 (7.8%) and KIT (23.1%) in MMs, our study also found that (i) mutations and amplifications in the transmembrane nucleoporin gene POM121 (30.8%) defined a patient subgroup with higher tumor proliferation rates; (ii) enrichment of structural variations (SVs) between chromosomes 5 and 12 defined a patient subgroup with significantly worse clinical outcomes; (iii) over 50% of the MM patients harbored recurrent focal amplification of several oncogenes (CDK4, MDM2 and AGAP2) at 12q13-15, and this co-occurred significantly with amplification of TERT at 5p15,-which-was-verified-in-the validation cohort; (iv) the PDX trial demonstrated robust anti-tumor effects of palbociclib in MMs harboring CDK4 amplification.

CONCLUSIONS: Our largest-to-date cohort WGS analysis of MMs defines the genomic landscape of this deadly cancer at unprecedented resolution, and identifies genomic aberrations that could facilitate the delivery of precision cancer treatments.