Molecular Analysis of the Cellular Ecosystem of Childhood Ependymoma

Ependymomas constitute nearly one third of the CNS neoplasms among children aged < 3 years. The disease remains a significant therapeutic challenge, with a 5-year overall survival rate < 55 % among this age group and no available chemotherapy of proven efficacy. The breadth of therapies is constrained by the current limited knowledge about the mechanisms of ependymoma progression. This project is part of a large study that utilizes single-nuclei and bulk expression data to characterize the composition and dynamics of the cellular ecosystem of childhood ependymoma.

This project concerns specifically the reconstruction of the immunophenotypic space of childhood ependymoma using available CBTN bulk RNA-seq data. Our preliminary results show that ependymal tumor progression is strongly coupled to alterations in the tumor immunophenotype. We aim to repeat this analysis using CBTN bulk RNA-seq data of 40 childhood ependymomas across all CNS compartments. This will permit us to validate our preliminary results in the CBTN cohort, before generating single-nuclei RNA-seq (snRNA-seq) data of this cohort.