Abstract 3120: Sex differences in pediatric cancer genomics

Abstract Sex differences have been observed in the incidence, prognosis and mortality of many different adult cancer types, linked to differences in tumor genomics. By contrast, sex differences in pediatric cancers have been understudied, with almost no genomic studies. To fill this gap, we have performed analyses on the genome, epigenome and transcriptome in eight different pediatric cancer types in nearly 3,000 tumors. Pediatric cancers had distinctive somatic mutational patterns when it came to sex differences, with acute lymphoblastic leukemia exhibiting sex-biases in its transcriptome and other cancer types showing stronger biases in their methylomes. However, no sex differences in somatic mutational profiles were identified. This stands in stark contrast to adult tumors, where we further previous genomic and transcriptomic studies by identifying sex differences in the proteomes, in drug sensitivity profiles and in functional genomics. In summary, our study reveals that sex differences in pediatric cancers are more modest than those in adult tumors and this may shed light into potential mechanisms by which sex influences the cancer genome. Citation Format: Jieun Oh, Chenghao Zhu, Nicole Zeltser, Constance H. Li, Brandon L. Tsai, Paul C. Boutros. Sex differences in pediatric cancer genomics [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2023; Part 1 (Regular and Invited Abstracts); 2023 Apr 14-19; Orlando, FL. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2023;83(7_Suppl):Abstract nr 3120.