Abstract 3097: Investigating an aggressive molecular subtype of stage I lung adenocarcinoma: Evidences for the acquirement of stem-like and immune evasion phenotype

Lung cancer early diagnosis is effective in reducing the risk of metastatic disease and improve overall survival. However, a significant fraction of patients (~20%) with early stage disease (Stage I) experience tumor recurrence and metastatic disease. Recent advances in high-throughput genomic screening allowed an in-depth molecular profile analyses of lung cancer, with particular emphasis for the identification of prognostic gene expression signatures. Indeed, we recently described the existence of an aggressive lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD) molecular subtype (Stage I), namely C1-LUAD, with a peculiar expression and mutational profile more resembling advanced metastatic cancer. Using an integrative approach relying on computational biology and lung cancer experimental models, we now discovered that this C1-subtype is characterized by stem-like and immune evading phenotype. In particular, gene-set enrichment analysis (GSEA) revealed that ‘C1-LUAD’ tumors are enriched in stem cell (SC) expression signatures (q-value Citation Format: Valentina Melocchi, Elisa Dama, Roberto Cuttano, Tommaso Colangelo, Paolo Graziano, Fabrizio Bianchi. Investigating an aggressive molecular subtype of stage I lung adenocarcinoma: Evidences for the acquirement of stem-like and immune evasion phenotype [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2019; 2019 Mar 29-Apr 3; Atlanta, GA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2019;79(13 Suppl):Abstract nr 3097.