CBIO-14. EXPLORING THE OTX2 REGULATORY NETWORK: TARGETING THE “GROW AND GO” ARMS OF THE MOST AGGRESSIVE MEDULLOBLASTOMAS
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Medulloblastoma (MB) is a highly heterogeneous primary malignant pediatric brain cancer. Despite improved 5-year survival rates, MB is frequently accompanied by metastatic dissemination and poor long-term prognosis. The most aggressive tumors are refractory to conventional chemotherapy and radiation. Our goal is to identify new signaling pathways that regulate the treatment-resistant MB cellular phenotypes, namely the stem cells and metastatic or highly motile cells. To this end, we have discovered that the OTX2 gene, which is amplified or overexpressed in the majority of aggressive MBs, is a central regulator of both stem cell function or self-renewal and cell migration in these tumors. However, the molecular mechanisms by which OTX2 regulates these functions are still unknown. Here, we employed complementary bioinformatics approaches to characterize the OTX2 regulatory network and have discovered a novel relationship between OTX2 and neurodevelopmental genes associated with axon guidance signaling in Group 3 and Group 4 MB stem/progenitor cells. Following OTX2 knockdown, transcripts associated with semaphorin, netrin, ephrin and slit signaling were mostly upregulated. ChIP-sequencing identified putative OTX2 DNA binding sites and revealed statistically significant associations between OTX2 and these axon guidance pathway genes, with the presence of 1 or more OTX2 binding peaks within the transcription start site. Further, Group 3 and 4 MB patient samples were evaluated for correlations between expression of axon guidance pathway genes, OTX2 and survival. Semaphorin signaling was the most overrepresented pathway across all datasets with expression of all pathway genes being upregulated following OTX2 KD. Moreover, one semaphorin gene was identified as a novel prognostic biomarker. We anticipate that delineation of the OTX2 network will identify molecular regulators of both self-renewal and motility, and that these genes will serve as better targets for development of novel therapeutics to effectively eradicate both the “grow and go” arms of the most aggressive MB.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.007 | 0.002 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".