Impact of accumulated alterations in driver and passenger genes on response to radiation therapy

Although various single genetic factors have been shown to affect radiosensitivity, high-throughput DNA sequencing analyses have revealed complex genomic landscapes in many cancer types. The aim of this study is to elucidate the association between accumulated alterations in driver and passenger genes and radiation therapy response.

We used 59 human solid cancer cell lines derived from 11 organ sites. Radiation-induced cell death was measured using a standard colony-forming assay delivered as a single dose ranging from 0 to 12 Gy. Comprehensive genomic data for the cell lines were acquired from the Catalogue Of Somatic Mutations In Cancer v. 80. Random forest classifiers were constructed to predict radioresistant phenotypes using genomic features. The Cancer Genome Atlas data sets were used to evaluate the clinical impact of the genomic feature following radiotherapy.

The 59 cancer cell lines harbored either nucleotide variations or copy number variations in a median of 157 genes per cell. Radiosensitivity of the cancer cells was correlated with neither the number of driver gene mutations nor the number of passenger gene mutations. However, the proportion of driver gene alterations to total gene alterations in gene sets selected from the Kyoto Encyclopedia Genes and Genomes predicted radioresistant cells with sensitivity of 85% and specificity of 73%. High probability of radioresistance predicted by the model was associated with worse overall survival following definitive radiotherapy in patients of The Cancer Genome Atlas data sets.

Cellular radiosensitivity was associated with the proportion of driver to total gene alterations in the selected oncogenic pathways, which may be a biomarker candidate for response to radiation therapy.

These findings suggest that accumulated alterations in not only driver genes but also passenger genes affect radiosensitivity.