Tumor- and circulating-free DNA methylation identifies clinically relevant small cell lung cancer subtypes

Simon Heeke, Carl M. Gay, Marcos R. Estecio, Hai Tran, Benjamin B. Morris, Bingnan Zhang, Ximing Tang, Maria Gabriela Raso, Pedro Rocha, Siqi Lai, Edurne Arriola, Paul Hofman, Veronique Hofman, Prasad Kopparapu, Christine M. Lovly, Kyle Concannon, Luana Guimaraes De Sousa, Whitney Elisabeth Lewis, Kimie Kondo, Xin HuAzusa Tanimoto, Natalie I. Vokes, Monique B. Nilsson, Allison Stewart, Maarten Jansen, Ildikó Horváth, Mina Gaga, Vasileios Panagoulias, Yael Raviv, Danny Frumkin, Adam Wasserstrom, Aharona Shuali, Catherine A. Schnabel, Yuanxin Xi, Lixia Diao, Qi Wang, Jianjun Zhang, Peter Van Loo, Jing Wang, Ignacio I. Wistuba, Lauren A. Byers, John V. Heymach

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    22 Scopus citations

    Abstract

    Small cell lung cancer (SCLC) is an aggressive malignancy composed of distinct transcriptional subtypes, but implementing subtyping in the clinic has remained challenging, particularly due to limited tissue availability. Given the known epigenetic regulation of critical SCLC transcriptional programs, we hypothesized that subtype-specific patterns of DNA methylation could be detected in tumor or blood from SCLC patients. Using genomic-wide reduced-representation bisulfite sequencing (RRBS) in two cohorts totaling 179 SCLC patients and using machine learning approaches, we report a highly accurate DNA methylation-based classifier (SCLC-DMC) that can distinguish SCLC subtypes. We further adjust the classifier for circulating-free DNA (cfDNA) to subtype SCLC from plasma. Using the cfDNA classifier (cfDMC), we demonstrate that SCLC phenotypes can evolve during disease progression, highlighting the need for longitudinal tracking of SCLC during clinical treatment. These data establish that tumor and cfDNA methylation can be used to identify SCLC subtypes and might guide precision SCLC therapy.

    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)225-237.e5
    JournalCancer Cell
    Volume42
    Issue number2
    DOIs
    StatePublished - 12 Feb 2024

    Keywords

    • DNA methylation
    • SCLC
    • biomarker
    • cfDNA
    • ctDNA
    • epigenetics
    • gene expression
    • liquid biopsy
    • lung cancer
    • subtyping

    ASJC Scopus subject areas

    • Oncology
    • Cancer Research

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