Pulmonary lymphoepithelioma-like carcinoma (LELC) is a rare and distinct subtype of primary lung cancer characterized by Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) infection. Herein, we reported the mutational landscape of pulmonary LELC using whole-exome sequencing, targeted deep sequencing and single-nucleotide polymorphism arrays. We identify a low degree of somatic mutation but widespread existence of copy number variations. We reveal predominant signature 2 mutations and frequent loss of type I interferon genes that are involved in the host-virus counteraction. Integrated analysis shows enrichment of genetic lesions affecting several critical pathways, including NF-κB, JAK/STAT, and cell cycle. Notably, multi-dimensional comparison unveils that pulmonary LELC resemble NPC but are clearly different from other lung cancers, natural killer/T-cell lymphoma or EBV-related gastric cancer in terms of genetic features. In all, our study illustrates a distinct genomic landscape of pulmonary LELC and provides a road map to facilitate genome-guided personalized treatment.

Palbociclib, a highly selective CDK4/6 inhibitor, has been shown to be a novel anti-tumor agent that suppresses breast cancer cell proliferation. However, its anti-metastasis activity remains controversial. In the present study, we evaluated whether palbociclib prevented breast cancer cell metastasis and revealed its regulatory mechanism. We found that palbociclib inhibited migration and invasion in the breast cancer cells MDA-MB-231 and T47D. The epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) markers, vimentin and Snail, were down-regulated with palbociclib treatment. Moreover, we revealed that this inhibition was mediated by the c-Jun/COX-2 pathway. COX-2 was decreased after palbociclib treatment. The production of PGE2 was also reduced along with COX-2. Additionally, our data showed that c-Jun, a crucial transcriptional regulator of COX-2, was down-regulated by palbociclib. We found that palbociclib weakened the COX-2 promoter binding activity of c-Jun and prevented its translocation from the cytoplasm to cell nuclei. Bioluminescence imaging and tail intravenous injection were used to evaluate the anti-metastasis effect of palbociclib in vivo. The data demonstrated that palbociclib reduced breast cancer metastasis to the lung. These results therefore demonstrated that the anti-metastasis activity of palbociclib is mediated via the c-Jun/COX-2 signaling pathway by inhibiting EMT in breast cancer cells.

BackgroundTopoisomerase II alpha (TOP2A) protein has been shown to be a proliferation marker associated with tumor grade and Ki67 index. The prognostic effect of TOP2A seems different among different subtypes of breast cancer. The current study evaluated the prognostic impact of TOP2A protein on luminal breast cancer.MethodAltogether 434 stage I-II luminal breast cancer patients who underwent curative surgery in Sun Yat-Sen University Cancer Center between 2007 and 2009 were enrolled. TOP2A protein expression was assessed by immunohistochemistry. Clinical and pathological data were retrospectively collected.ResultWith a cut-off value of 30%, 127 (29.3%) patients were classified as TOP2A overexpression. TOP2A overexpression was associated with a higher tumor grade and Ki67 index. Patients with TOP2A high expression showed a significantly higher rate of distant metastasis and shorter distant metastasis free survival (DMFS) compared with patients with low TOP2A expression. The prognostic influence of TOP2A expression was more significant in years 5–8 after diagnosis, and more pronounced in stage II patients, luminal B disease, and patients treated with adjuvant endocrine therapy alone. Multivariate survival analysis revealed TOP2A overexpression was an independent fact for worse DMFS.ConclusionTOP2A protein showed a time dependent influence on prognosis in stage I-II luminal breast cancer, suggesting it might be a potential predictor of late recurrence for this group of patients.

High-level tissue tumor mutational burden (tTMB) or blood TMB (bTMB) are associated with better response of immunotherapy in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients. However, the correlations of single-region tTMB, multi-region tTMB and bTMB remain to be determined. Moreover, whether intratumor heterogeneity (ITH) has impact on TMB should be clarified. We collected multi-region tumor tissues with matched blood from 32 operative NSCLC and evaluated single-region tTMB, multi-region tTMB and bTMB through a 1021-gene panel sequencing. TMB of > 9 mutations/Mb was classified as high. Besides, we used tTMB fold-change to evaluate the influence of the enrolled region number on tTMB. We found both of single-region tTMB and bTMB showed strong correlations with multi-region tTMB, while the former correlated better (Pearson r = 0.94, P = 2E-84; Pearson r = 0.47, P = 0.0067). It showed extremely high specificity (100%) but low sensitivity (43%) when using bTMB to define TMB-high patients, while most false-negative predictions were in early-stage patients. Compared to single region, we found significantly enhanced tTMB fold-change if taking multi-regions for consideration. However, it showed insignificant tTMB fold-change increase if the included regions’ number more than three. Moreover, ITH-high patients had significantly higher tTMB fold-change compared with ITH-low patients (2.32 vs. 1.02, P = 8.879e-05). The conversion rate of tTMB level (tTMB-low to tTMB-high) was numerically higher in ITH-high group than that in ITH-low group (16.67% vs. 3.84%). In summary, single-region tTMB has stronger correlation with multi-region tTMB compared with bTMB. ITH has an impact on tTMB, especially in high-level ITH patients. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1186/s40425-019-0581-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Understanding of intratumor heterogeneity (ITH) among different non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) subtypes is necessary. Whether circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) profile could represent these ITH is still an open question. We performed 181 multi-region tumor tissues sequencing and matched ctDNA sequencing from 32 operative NSCLC to compare ITH among different NSCLC subtypes, including EGFR-mutant lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD), KRAS-mutant LUAD, EGFR&KRAS-wild-type LUAD, and lung squamous cell carcinoma (LUSC), and examine potential value of ctDNA for ITH analysis. ITH is evaluated by ITH index (ITHi). If the somatic genetic alteration is shared by all the tissue regions, it is defined as trunk mutation. Otherwise, it is called branch mutation. The ITHi will be higher, if the tumor has less trunk mutations. We found EGFR-mutant LUAD showed significantly higher ITHi than KRAS-mutant LUAD/wild-type LUAD (P = 0.03) and numerically higher ITH than LUSC. For trunk mutations, driver mutations were identified at a higher proportion than passenger mutations (60% vs. 40%, P = 0.0023) in overall, especially in EGFR-mutant LUAD (86% vs. 14%, P = 0.0004), while it was opposite in KRAS-mutant LUAD (40% vs. 60%, P = 0.18). For branch mutations, the proportions of driver mutations and passenger mutations were similar for each NSCLC subtype. ctDNA analysis showed unsatisfactory detections of tumor-derived trunk and branch mutations (43% vs. 23%, P = 4.53e-6) among all NSCLC subtypes. In summary, EGFR-mutant LUAD has the highest ITH than other NSCLC subtypes, offering further understanding of tumorigenesis mechanisms among different NSCLC subtypes. Besides, ctDNA maybe not an appropriate method to reflect ITH.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1186/s12943-019-0939-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.