A transcriptional and metabolic signature of primary aneuploidy is present in chromosomally-unstable cancer cells and informs clinical prognosis

In all primary cells analyzed to date, aneuploidy is associated with poor proliferation. Yet, how abnormal karyotypes affect cancer a disease characterized by both aneuploidy and heightened proliferative capacity is largely unknown. Here, I demonstrate that the transcriptional alterations caused by aneuploidy in primary cells are also present in chromosomally-unstable cancer cell lines, but are not common to all aneuploid cancers. Moreover, chromosomally-unstable cancer lines display increased glycolytic and TCA-cycle flux, as is also observed in primary aneuploid cells. The biological response to aneuploidy is associated with cellular stress and slow proliferation, and a 70-gene signature derived from primary aneuploid cells is a strong predictor of increased survival in several cancers. Inversely, a transcriptional signature derived from clonal aneuploidy in tumors correlates with high mitotic activity and poor prognosis. I speculate that there are two types of aneuploidy in cancer: clonal aneuploidy, which is selected during tumor evolution and is associated with robust growth, and sub-clonal aneuploidy, which is caused by chromosomal instability (CIN) and more closely resembles the stressed state of primary aneuploid cells. Nonetheless, CIN is not benign: a subset of genes upregulated in high-CIN cancers predict aggressive disease in human patients in a proliferation-independent manner.

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