Ongoing genome doubling shapes evolvability and immunity in ovarian cancer.
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Abstract | Whole-genome doubling (WGD) is a common feature of human cancers and is linked to tumour progression, drug resistance, and metastasis. Here we examine the impact of WGD on somatic evolution and immune evasion at single-cell resolution in patient tumours. Using single-cell whole-genome sequencing, we analysed 70 high-grade serous ovarian cancer samples from 41 patients (30,260 tumour genomes) and observed near-ubiquitous evidence that WGD is an ongoing mutational process. WGD was associated with increased cell-cell diversity and higher rates of chromosomal missegregation and consequent micronucleation. We developed a mutation-based WGD timing method called doubleTime to delineate specific modes by which WGD can drive tumour evolution, including early fixation followed by considerable diversification, multiple parallel WGD events on a pre-existing background of copy-number diversity, and evolutionarily late WGD in small clones and individual cells. Furthermore, using matched single-cell RNA sequencing and high-resolution immunofluorescence microscopy, we found that inflammatory signalling and cGAS-STING pathway activation result from ongoing chromosomal instability, but this is restricted to predominantly diploid tumours (WGD-low). By contrast, predominantly WGD tumours (WGD-high), despite increased missegregation, exhibited cell-cycle dysregulation, STING1 repression, and immunosuppressive phenotypic states. Together, these findings establish WGD as an ongoing mutational process that promotes evolvability and dysregulated immunity in high-grade serous ovarian cancer. |
Year of Publication | 2025
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Journal | Nature
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Volume | 644
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Issue | 8078
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Pages | 1078-1087
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Date Published | 08/2025
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ISSN | 1476-4687
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DOI | 10.1038/s41586-025-09240-3
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PubMed ID | 40670783
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