LAUSR

302Background: NETs lack mutations in the “classical” signaling pathways but share mutations in regulators of gene expression (Jiao; 2011). We compared gene expression in PD & WD NETs to identify novel targets and biomarkers of differentiation. Methods: High quality RNA, extracted from paraffin blocks of deidentified NETs under an IRB-approved protocol, was profiled using a 770 gene panel (nCounter PanCancer pathway, Nanostring Technologies). The resulting data was used to identify the differentially expressed genes between PD and WD NETs using limma software (Ritchie; 2015). Gene Set Enrichment Analysis (Subramanian; 2005) identified differential pathway enrichment by calculating a Normalized Enrichment Score (NES). Results: Analysis of 16 PD and 23 WD NET samples identified 154 genes as extreme outliers ( > 2 fold up/downregulation between the subtypes). Compared to WD NETS, drug targets of interest overexpressed in PD NETs were histone lysine methyltransferase EZH2, and a cell cycle regulator CHEK1 (6....