Sasha will be chairing and presenting at the Major Symposium on “Germline-Somatic Interactions in Cancer Risk and Tumor Evolution” at the AACR 2019 Annual Meeting in Atlanta. The session is on Tue, Apr 2, 10:30am - 12:15pm in Georgia Ballrm 1 - Bldg C. The session description is:

Cancer is a disease influenced by both germline and somatic variation. These domains have largely been examined in isolation and by different communities, despite the mounting evidence that germline variants interact with tumor events individually and in aggregate. In this session, we highlight analyses that leverage somatic functional activity to elucidate germline risk mechanisms, use epigenetic data to identify germline-somatic interactions in the noncoding genome, and relate germline variants to somatic mutation susceptibility. The analyses and methods presented can help (i) characterize previously unknown risk mechanisms in their somatic context, (ii) identify germline variants that impact tumor evolution and treatment response, and (iii) lead towards better precision oncology by selecting interventions on the basis of germline and somatic genetics.

  • SY25-01: Identification of enhancer elements at kidney cancer susceptibility loci using genome-wide approaches in which post-GWAS functional studies implicate the SWI/SNF DPF3 gene for the 14q24 risk locus. Presented by Stephen J. Chanock
  • SY25-02: Widespread germline-somatic regulatory differences in renal cell carcinoma prioritize risk mechanisms. Presented by Alexander Gusev
  • SY25-03: Germline MHC-I and -II variation constrains the somatic mutational landscape. Presented by Rachel Marty