Maria Dolores Giraldez

BACKGROUND: Transrenal cell-free tumor DNA (TR-ctDNA), which transits from the bloodstream into urine, has the potential to enable noninvasive cancer detection for a wide variety of nonurologic cancer types. Methods: Using whole-genome sequencing, we discovered that urine TR-ctDNA fragments across multiple cancer types are predominantly ultrashort (+ OPSCC) and confirmed that assaying ultrashort DNA is critical for sensitive cancer detection from urine samples. Results: TR-ctDNA was concordant with plasma ctDNA for cancer detection in patients with HPV ⁺ OPSCC. As proof of concept for using urine TR-ctDNA for posttreatment surveillance, in a small longitudinal case series, TR-ctDNA showed promise for noninvasive detection of recurrence of HPV ⁺ OPSCC. Conclusion: Our data indicate that focusing on ultrashort fragments of TR-ctDNA will be important for realizing the full potential of urine-based cancer diagnostics. This has implications for urine-based detection of a wide variety of cancer types and for facilitating access to care through at-home specimen collections. Funding: NIH grants R33 CA229023, R21 CA225493; NIH/National Cancer Institute grants U01 CA183848, R01 CA184153, and P30CA046592; American Cancer Society RSG-18-062-01-TBG; American Cancer Society Mission Boost grant MBGI-22-056-01-MBG; and the A. Alfred Taubman Medical Research Institute.

IL-6 family cytokines are defined by the common use of the signal-transducing receptor chain glycoprotein 130 (gp130). Increasing evidence indicates that these cytokines are essential in the regulation of metabolic homeostasis as well as in the pathophysiology of multiple gastrointestinal and liver disorders, thus making them attractive therapeutic targets. Over the past few years, therapies modulating gp130 signalling have grown exponentially in several clinical settings including obesity, cancer and inflammatory bowel disease. A newly engineered gp130 cytokine, IC7Fc, has shown promising preclinical results for the treatment of type 2 diabetes, obesity and liver steatosis. Moreover, drugs that modulate gp130 signalling have shown promise in refractory inflammatory bowel disease in clinical trials. A deeper understanding of the main roles of the IL-6 family of cytokines during homeostatic and pathological conditions, their signalling pathways, sources of production and target cells will be crucial to the development of improved treatments. Here, we review the current state of the role of these cytokines in hepatology and gastroenterology and discuss the progress achieved in translating therapeutics targeting gp130 signalling into clinical practice.

Extracellular RNAs (exRNAs) in biofluids have attracted great interest as potential biomarkers. Although extracellular microRNAs in blood plasma are extensively characterized, extracellular messenger RNA (mRNA) and long noncoding RNA (lncRNA) studies are limited. We have recently reported that human plasma contains fragmented mRNAs and lncRNAs that are missed by standard small RNA-seq protocols due to lack of 5′phosphate or presence of 3′phosphate. Here, we describe a modified protocol for preparation of small RNA libraries for next generation sequencing called “phospho-RNA-seq.” This protocol has been optimized for use with low-input exRNA-containing samples, such as plasma or serum, and has modifications introduced to capture extracellular RNA with varied 5′and 3′ends.

Using a newly developed method dubbed SILVER-Seq—enabling extracellular RNA sequencing (exRNA-seq) directly from a small volume of human serum or plasma— Yan et al. recently reported in Current Biology a potential exRNA biomarker for the early diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease [1]. After the publication of the initial paper describing the SILVER-Seq method [2], we reported our concern regarding potential DNA contamination in their datasets [3]. Although the authors replied they were able to successfully treat RNA samples with DNase to avoid such contamination, they did not address our observations of the majority of reads without evidence of being derived from RNA, nor documented verified absence of DNA after DNase treatment [4]. To assess whether the newly data generated may suffer from DNA contamination, we downloaded the publicly available sequencing data and evaluated two quality control metrics (i.e., fraction of exonic and splice reads), which were not reported in the paper. We found that both quality metrics were much lower than expected for RNA-seq data (6.28% exonic and 0.478% splice reads), in line with our previous findings on the first SILVER-Seq paper. These observations suggest the data and results presented by Yan et al. are affected by DNA contamination, an issue that may be inherent to the SILVER-Seq technology.