Back

Condensate-Driven Transcriptional Reprogramming Defines Core Vulnerabilities in Esophageal and Gastric Cancers

Alvarez-Carrion, L.; R. Tejedor, A.; Ardura, J. A.; Alonso, V.; Alonso-Moreno, C.; Collepardo-Guevara, R.; Gutierrez-Rojas, I.; Privat, C.; Moreno, V.; Calvo, E.; Gyorffy, B.; Espinosa, J. R.; Ocana, A.

2026-02-24 bioinformatics
10.64898/2026.02.23.707358 bioRxiv
Show abstract

Biomolecular condensates organize key nuclear functions by compartmentalizing biomolecules, yet their contribution to gastrointestinal tumorigenesis remains poorly defined. Integrating multi-omics profiling, functional genomics, and molecular dynamics simulations, we reveal that esophageal and gastric cancers share a condensate-enriched transcriptional program driven by intrinsically disordered proteins involved in transcription, RNA processing, and replication stress. Transcriptomic analyses identify a hyperactive transcriptional state with upregulation of condensate-associated genes, including TOPBP1 and CHERP. Dependency mapping demonstrates that these proteins are essential for tumor cell viability, defining a conserved condensate core across different tumor types. Machine-learned predictions and residue-resolution coarse-grained simulations confirm that TOPBP1 and CHERP undergo phase separation through homotypic interactions mediated by intrinsically disordered regions, with saturation concentrations below 2 {micro}M, consistent with spontaneous condensate formation observed in vitro. Together, these findings establish condensate organization as a fundamental mesoscale principle in upper gastrointestinal cancers and nominate condensate scaffolds as tractable therapeutic vulnerabilities.

Matching journals

The top 3 journals account for 50% of the predicted probability mass.

50% of probability mass above

"Similar papers" are the closest papers from that journal in the model's embedding space. They show what the match is built on, but the ranking comes mostly from a classifier over the whole training set, not from these examples alone.