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Detection of Merkel cell polyomavirus using whole exome sequencing data

Garcia-Mulero, S.; Moratalla-Navarro, F.; Curiel-Olmo, S.; Moreno, V.; Pedro Vaque, J.; Sanz-Pamplona, R.; Piulats, J. M.

2020-04-28 bioinformatics
10.1101/2020.04.27.063214 bioRxiv
Show abstract

Merkel cell carcinoma (MCC) is a highly malignant neuroendocrine tumor of the skin in which Merkel cell polyomavirus (MCV) DNA virus insertion can be detected in 75-89% of cases. Etiologic and phenotypic differences exist between MCC tumors with and without the inserted virus, thus it is important to distinguish between MCV+ MCC and MCV-MCC cases. Currently, MCV insertions in MCC genomes are detected using laboratory techniques. Here we report a freely available bioinformatics methodology to identify MCV+ MCC tumors using whole exome sequencing (WES) data. WES data could be also used to infer the virus insertion site into the tumor genome. Our method has been validated in a set of MCC samples previously characterized in the laboratory as MCV+ or MCV-, achieving 100% sensitivity and 62,5% specificity. Thus, with enough depth of sequencing, it is possible to use WES to the presence of MCV insertions in cancer samples.

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