The diagnosis of sarcoma with CIC-DUX4 gene fusion is difficult in lack of specific pathological characteristics emphasizing the need for molecular analysis.
Heterogeneous elements included a myxoid spindle cell component in three BCOR-CCNB3 sarcomas and an epithelioid cell component in two CIC-associated sarcomas (one CIC-DUX4-positive and one CIC-DUX4-negative sarcomas).
The CIC-DUX4 sarcoma is a small round blue cell sarcoma which presents like extraskeletal Ewing sarcoma, but is negative for the EWSR1 gene translocation.
Aside from the desmoplastic stroma, the CIC-FOXO4 fusion sarcoma showed morphologic and immunohistochemical similarity to ESFT and Ewing-like sarcomas, including the recently described CIC-DUX4 fusion sarcoma.
Unsupervised clustering by RNAseq data revealed that tumors with BCOR genetic alterations, including BCOR-CCNB3, BCOR-MAML3, and BCOR ITD, formed a tight genomic group distinct from ES and CIC-rearranged sarcomas.
We performed a detailed immunohistochemical analysis to investigate ETV4 expression in CIC-rearranged undifferentiated round-cell sarcomas and their potential mimics (especially Ewing sarcomas).