Genome-wide network analysis of Wnt signaling in three pediatric cancers

Genomic structural alteration is common in pediatric cancers, and analysis of data generated by the Pediatric Cancer Genome Project reveals such tumor-related alterations in many Wnt signaling–associated genes. Most pediatric cancers are thought to arise within developing tissues that undergo substantial expansion during early organ formation, growth and maturation, and Wnt signaling plays an important role in this development. We examined three pediatric tumors—medullobastoma, early T-cell precursor acute lymphoblastic leukemia, and retinoblastoma—that show multiple genomic structural variations within Wnt signaling pathways. We mathematically modeled this pathway to investigate the effects of cancer-related structural variations on Wnt signaling. Surprisingly, we found that an outcome measure of canonical Wnt signaling was consistently similar in matched cancer cells and normal cells, even in the context of different cancers, different mutations, and different Wnt-related genes. Our results suggest that the cancer cells maintain a normal level of Wnt signaling by developing multiple mutations.