Authors
Smith, G. A., van Belzen, I. A. E. M., Epinette, M., Herdes, E., Mercer, K. L., Butterworth, C. G., Rust, A. G., Flanagan, A. M., Jones, M. G., Cortes-Ciriano, I., Jacks, T.
Abstract
Osteosarcoma (OS) genomes are characterized by complex genomic rearrangements (CGRs) that drive genomic instability and clonal diversification early in tumor evolution. As a result, OS tumors display high inter-patient variability, which has hindered molecular stratification and targeted therapeutic development. To study genomic complexity in OS and credential a genetically engineered mouse model of the disease (Sp7-Cre Trp53fl Rb1fl), we performed high-depth and multi-region whole genome sequencing (WGS) of 35 tumor samples from 24 mice. Similar to human OS, the murine OS tumors (mOS) had a high number of somatic structural variants (158 per tumor) with low tumor mutational burden of single nucleotide variants (0.87 mutations/MB). CGRs were identified in 63% (15/24) of mOS cases, most frequently affecting chromosome 15 (33%, 8/24 mice) and resulting in Myc amplification in 6 mice, ranging from 5 to 104 copies. Myc amplification was verified with DNA FISH, long-read sequencing and gene expression data, which revealed examples of Myc amplification in both extrachromosomal circular DNA (ecDNA) and in derivative chromosomes generated by CGRs. PTEN loss occurred frequently (59% 12/22 mice), and contributed to osteosarcomagenesis, as demonstrated by tumor initiation with in vivo CRISPR/Cas9-mediated deletion experiments (2 mice). Together, these results demonstrate that a preclinical model of osteosarcoma can generate the genomic heterogeneity and complexity of the human disease, thereby facilitating research into mechanisms of tumor initiation and drivers of progression and relapse.
Preprint server:
bioRxiv
The authors list and abstract were imported from bioRxiv on 30 Apr 2026.
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