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Updated: Sep 20, 2025

A Protocol for Rapid Post-mortem Cell Culture of Diffuse Intrinsic Pontine Glioma DIPG
Published on: March 7, 2017
A primary DICER1-sarcoma with KRAS and TP53 mutations in a child with suspected ECCL
Kaiyun Yang1, Justin Wang2,3, Nisha Kanwar4
1Department of Neurosurgery, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada. kaiyun.yang@medportal.ca.
Abstract:
A child had been followed since infancy by our multi-disciplinary neuro-oncology clinic with annual magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) under the presumed diagnosis of encephalocraniocutaneous lipomatosis (ECCL), with clinical features including nevus psiloliparus, scalp lipoma, nodular skin tag on and coloboma of the eyelid, cortical atrophy and meningeal angiomatosis. At the age of 4, she was found to have a large temporoparietal lesion causing elevated intracranial pressure requiring surgical resection. Histopathological exam of the tumor was suggestive of an intracranial sarcoma. Sequencing analysis of the tumor revealed mutations in DICER1, KRAS and TP53. Subsequent germline testing confirmed DICER1 syndrome and revealed an insignificant FGFR1 variant at a low frequency. Methylation profile of the tumor showed the tumor clustered most closely with sarcoma (rhabdomyosarcoma-like), confirming this tumor to be a primary DICER1-sarcoma. Compared to the previously reported cases, our unique case of primary DICER1-sarcoma also demonstrated neurofilament and chromogranin positivity, and genomic instability with loss of chromosome 4p, 4q, 8p, 11p, and 19p, as well as gains in chromosome 7p, 9p, 9q, 13q, and 15q on copy variant analysis. The detailed sequencing and methylation information discovered in this unique case of DICER1-sarcoma will hopefully help further our understanding of this rare and emerging entity.
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