Kristina A. Cole

TL;DR: It is demonstrated that heritable mutations of ALK are the main cause of familial neuroblastoma, and that germline or acquired activation of this cell-surface kinase is a tractable therapeutic target for this lethal paediatric malignancy.

TL;DR: The authors reported a low median exonic mutation frequency of 0.60 per Mb (0.48 nonsilent) and notably few recurrently mutated genes in high-risk neuroblastoma.

TL;DR: An extensive assessment of mutation burden through sequencing analysis of >81,000 tumors from pediatric and adult patients, including tumors with hypermutation caused by chemotherapy, carcinogens, or germline alterations, uncovered new driver mutations in the replication-repair-associated DNA polymerases and a distinct impact of microsatellite instability and replication repair deficiency on the scale of mutation load.

TL;DR: The identification of a common CNV at chromosome 1q21.1 associated with neuroblastoma in the discovery set is described and a previously unknown transcript within the CNV that showed high sequence similarity to several neuro Blastoma breakpoint family genes and represents a new member of this gene family (NBPF23).

TL;DR: The data show that LEE011 is active in a large subset of neuroblastoma cell line and xenograft models, and supports the clinical development of this CDK4/6 inhibitor as a therapy for patients with this disease.