Abstract 1536: Deciphering the crosstalk within the tumor microenvironment of NSCLC by a virtual microdissection approach
Authors: Parab Sushant , Napoli Francesca , Corà Davide , Doronzo Gabriella , Communanza Valentina , Righi Luisella , Primo Luca , Monica Valentina , Manganaro Lorenzo , Selene Bianco , Bironzo Paolo , Scagliotti Giorgio , Bussolino Federico 
Published: March 2024

Introduction: Non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is a highly heterogenous disease with the largest number of cancer-related mortality worldwide, one of the reasons for this is the complex and diverse tumor microenvironment (TME) comprising of numerous cell types. Several studies have already highlighted the importance of TME in dictating progression steps and response to therapies; however, a transcriptome-based molecular subtyping of patients in lung adenocarcinomas (LUADs) and lung squamous cell carcinomas (LUSCs) can further determine the distinct tumor immune microenvironment (TiME), which can eventually provide a systematic overview to improve the diagnosis and prognosis of patients.

Material and method: To elucidate such nature of interactions between tumor cells and cells comprising the TME, we exploited the transcriptome of 300 early stages (Ib-IIIa) NSCLC recruited in the prospective observational clinical trial PROMOLE. With the help of a clustering approach, initially we performed a molecular-based virtual stratification/dissection on the NSCLC patients. Next, to elucidate the relative cell-type abundance, a deconvolution approach was applied to identify the possibility of tumor infiltrating immune cells within these subgroups. Immunohistochemistry (IHC) was then used to substantiate these predictions on tumor cells.

Results and discussion: The resulting subgroups of LUADs and LUSCs are biologically well-characterized by mutational and gene expression profiles. Cell-type abundance approach identified samples which are enriched with tumor infiltrating immune cells like Neutrophils, Tcells, macrophages, etc. These findings were positively confirmed by IHC with multiple cell markers such as MPO, CD4, CD8, CD68, etc. Integrating these two results highlighted the proportion of TiME in the two different sub-populations along with shedding some light on the crosstalk happening between different cancer-/immune- cell lines.

Conclusion: The in-silico predictions on bulk RNA data by virtual micro-dissection, distinguished the two distinct NSCLC subtypes, each associated with clinical and molecular features. Furthermore, the immune cells infiltration suggests a possible role of infiltrating tumor immune cells with the prognosis of patients. Our analysis successfully performed an intra-sample and inter-sample comparison, which can unveil new prognostic markers that can provide relevant information for cancer immunotherapy.

Citation Format: Sushant Parab, Francesca Napoli, Davide Corà, Gabriella Doronzo, Valentina Communanza, Luisella Righi, Luca Primo, Valentina Monica, Lorenzo Manganaro, Bianco Selene, Paolo Bironzo, Giorgio Scagliotti, Federico Bussolino. Deciphering the crosstalk within the tumor microenvironment of NSCLC by a virtual microdissection approach [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2024; Part 1 (Regular Abstracts); 2024 Apr 5-10; San Diego, CA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2024;84(6_Suppl):Abstract nr 1536.