Fig. 2: DNA methylation analysis reveals overlapping patterns of NEN liver metastases and hepatic NEN without known primary.
From: DNA methylation patterns facilitate tracing the origin of neuroendocrine neoplasms
Shown are t-SNE plots of the DNA methylation profiles of CCA, HCC and a total of 197 NEN samples from different organ sites. A Indicated are all tumor subgroups including CCA (N = 27), HCC (N = 50), hepatic NEN without known primary tumor (N = 22), NEN liver metastases of known primary (N = 22), appendiceal NEN (N = 15), ileal NEN (N = 18), intestinal NEN not otherwise specified (N = 32), pancreatic NEN (N = 25), Merkel cell carcinomas (N = 14), pulmonary NEC (N = 24) and pulmonary carcinoids (N = 25). As only ileal but not gastric/duodenal (N = 14) and colorectal NEN (N = 18) exhibited a clear cluster, gastric/duodenal and colorectal NEN were combined as intestinal NEN not otherwise specified. B Paired primary and metastasis samples of 12 patients are depicted. C Hepatic NEN showed overlapping DNA methylation patterns with pancreatic NEN and ileal NEN. D Furthermore, several hepatic NEN clustered together with pulmonary NEC. E Across NEN tumor entities, NEN with low (<3%) or intermediate (3–20%) percentage of Ki67-positive tumor cells separated from NEN with high Ki67 (>20%). F Hepatic NEN (N = 22) with low (<3%) or intermediate (3–20%) Ki67 expression clustered separately in comparison to those with high (>20%) Ki67 expression. CCA cholangiocarcinoma, HCC hepatocellular carcinoma.
