Beyond Traditional Morphological Characterization of Lung Neuroendocrine Neoplasms: In Silico Study of Next-Generation Sequencing Mutations Analysis across the Four World Health Organization Defined Groups

• Main Authors: Giovanni Centonze, Davide Biganzoli, Natalie Prinzi, Sara Pusceddu, Alessandro Mangogna, Elena Tamborini, Federica Perrone, Adele Busico, Vincenzo Lagano, Laura Cattaneo, Gabriella Sozzi, Luca Roz, Elia Biganzoli, Massimo Milione
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2020-09-01
• Series: Cancers
• Subjects: lung cancer; lung neuroendocrine neoplasm; in silico analysis
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6694/12/10/2753

Lung neuroendocrine neoplasms (LNENs) represent a rare and heterogeneous population of lung tumors. LNENs incidence rate has increased dramatically over the past 30 years. The current World Health Organization LNENs classification (WHO 2015), distinguished four LNENs prognostic categories, according to their morphology, necrosis amount and mitotic count: typical carcinoid (TC), atypical-carcinoid (AC), large cell neuroendocrine carcinoma (LCNEC) and small cell lung cancer (SCLC). At present, due to their rarity and biological heterogeneity there is still no consensus on the best therapeutic approach. Next-generation-sequencing analysis showed that WHO 2015 LNENs classes, could be characterized also by specific molecular alterations: frequently mutated genes involving chromatin remodeling and generally characterized by low mutational burden (MB) are frequently detected in both TC and AC; otherwise, <i>TP53</i> and <i>RB1</i> tumor suppressor genes alterations and high MB are usually detected in LCNEC and SCLC. We provide an overview concerning gene mutations in each WHO 2015 LNENs class in order to report the current LNENs mutational status as potential tool to better understand their clinical outcome and to drive medical treatment.