Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, OH
Haider Mahdi , Amy Joehlin-Price , Afshin Dowlati , Ata Abbas
Background: High-grade neuroendocrine carcinoma (NEC) of the cervix and other gynecologic origins are rare and aggressive cancers that unfortunately affect young women with high mortality. Treatment recommendations are often extrapolated from their counterpart, small cell carcinoma of the lung (SCLC). In the present study, we have performed comprehensive genomic and transcriptomic analyses in a cohort of patients with NEC of the cervix and other gynecologic origins and compared them to SCLC. Methods: We have identified 27 patients diagnosed with NEC of gynecologic origin from 1998-2019. Of them, we were able to obtain archival tissue from 14 patients (17 samples), including seven cervical NEC, three ovarian NEC, and two endometrial NEC. Two ovarian and one cervical patient have recurrent tumors. Whole exome sequencing (WES) and RNA-seq were successfully performed in 14 and 13 samples, respectively. BWA-MEM was used for mapping (hg38), and GATK Haplotype Caller was used for WES analysis. Ensemble-VEP was used for variant annotation, and SIFT and PolyPhen-2 were used for pathogenic prediction of missense mutations. Stranded pair-end RNA-seq data were analyzed using STAR and DESeq2. SCLC data from cBioPortal and EBI (accession number EGAS00001000334) were used to compare mutation and transcriptomic profiles. Results: We found that TP53 is not mutated in our cohort, and RB1 is mutated only in 1 (7%) tumor. TP53 and RB1 are the most frequently mutated genes in small cell lung carcinoma. However, LRP1B, the third most mutated gene in SCLC was also mutated in 4 (29%) tumors. We observed that WNT, RTK-RAS, NOTCH, and MYC are among the top mutated pathways in our cohort. Among the top 20 mutated genes, only four genes, MUC4, KMT2C, MAP3K1, and HLA-A, were common in cervical, ovarian, and endometrial tumors suggesting a high diversity within the NEC of gynecologic origin. Our RNA-seq analysis revealed a distinct transcriptional signature when compared to SCLC, especially the expression pattern of SCLC molecular subtypes defining ASCL1, NEUROD1, POU3F2, and YAP1 genes. Surprisingly, we observed a high expression of the YAP1 gene in all of the 13 tumors. However, the YAP1+ subtype represents a minority in SCLC and known to predict chemotherapy resistance and lower survival. Conclusions: Our results suggest a unique mutational profile and transcriptional signature that are distinct compared to SCLC tumors. Therefore, there is an urgent need to re-evaluate the therapeutic options and targets for NEC of gynecologic origin.
Disclaimer
This material on this page is ©2024 American Society of Clinical Oncology, all rights reserved. Licensing available upon request. For more information, please contact licensing@asco.org
Abstract Disclosures
2022 ASCO Annual Meeting
First Author: Jiazhang Xing
2023 ASCO Annual Meeting
First Author: Charles M. Rudin
2023 ASCO Annual Meeting
First Author: Daria Seriak
2023 ASCO Annual Meeting
First Author: Kaiwen Zhou