BRAF V600E mutant colorectal cancer subtypes based on gene expression

Abstract

Purpose: Mutation of BRAF at the valine 600 residue occurs in approximately 10% of colorectal cancers, a group with particularly poor prognosis. The response of BRAF mutant colorectal cancer to recent targeted strategies such as anti-BRAF or combinations with MEK and EGFR inhibitors remains limited and highly heterogeneous within BRAF V600E cohorts. There is clearly an unmet need in understanding the biology of BRAF V600E colorectal cancers and potential subgroups within this population. Experimental Design: In the biggest yet reported cohort of 218 BRAF V600E with gene expression data,we performed unsupervised clustering using non-negative matrix factorization to identify gene expression-ba..