Genetics of Cushing’s disease: from the lab to clinical practice

Cushing’s disease is a rare, but devastating condition, caused by corticotroph tumors. It rarely manifests as syndrome and very few isolated cases present with germline mutations. Instead, the vast majority of corticotroph tumors are sporadic monoclonal neoplasms. At present, the major recurrent somatic driver mutations are found in the USP8 gene, which encodes for a deubiquitinase that rescues proteins regulating ACTH synthesis. Almost half of functional corticotroph tumors carry somatic USP8 mutations that associate with a distinct transcriptomic and clinical profile. Other genes mutated in a small fraction of corticotroph tumors include the deubiquitinase encoding gene USP48 and the glucocorticoid receptor expressing NR3C1. Recent reports on somatic TP53 and ATRX mutations in corticotroph macroadenomas and carcinomas indicate that within specific patient subpopulations they are not as rare as assumed.