Clinical Implications of Noncoding Indels in the Surfactant-Encoding Genes in Lung Cancer

Abstract

Lung cancer arises from the accumulation of genetic mutations, usually in exons. A recent study identified indel mutations in the noncoding region of surfactant-encoding genes in lung adenocarcinoma cases. In this study, we recruited 86 patients with 95 lung cancers (72 adenocarcinomas, 15 squamous cell carcinomas, and eight other histologies) who had undergone surgery in our department. A cancer panel was designed in-house for analyzing the noncoding regions, and targeted sequencing was performed. Indels in the 3′ untranslated region of surfactant-encoding genes were identified in 23/95 (24.2%) cases, irrespective of histological type and/or disease stage. In clinical practice, these indels may be used as clonal markers in patients with multiple cancers and to determine the origin of cancer of unknown primary site. Funding Statement: This study was supported by a Grant-in-Aid for the Genome Research Project from Yamanashi Prefecture (awarded to Y.H. and M.O.) and by grants from the Japanese Foundation for Multidisciplinary Treatment of Cancer (to T.G.). Declaration of Interests: The authors declare no competing interests. Ethics Approval Statement: The research was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki, and the study was approved by the Institutional Review Board Committee of Yamanashi Central Hospital (Yamanashi, Japan).