Clinical and molecular characteristics of TSC1/2 mutant lung cancer.
e21647 Background: Tumor suppressor genes TSC1 and TSC2 inhibit cell growth through inactivation the function of mTORC1. Previous studies have demonstrated that loss of function mutation of either TSC1 or TSC2 gene result in formation of neoplasm in multiple tissues. However, the clinical significance of TSC1 and TSC2 in non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) remains unknown. This study aimed to investigate the clinical and molecular characteristics of TSC1 and TSC2 mutation in NSCLC patients. Methods: We retrieved the clinical and genomic information of 1144 NSCLC from the Pan-Lung cancer dataset through the cBioportal ( www.cbioportal.org) . The cohorts of TSC1 and TSC2 mutant patients were identified. We compared baseline characteristics of patients with the Fisher exact test for categorical data and the Mann-Whitney U test for continuous variables. Overall survival (OS) was estimated with Kaplan-Meier curves, and differences were compared with the log-rank test. Results: Among 1144 patients, 27(2.36%) of them had TSC1 mutation and 40 (3.50%) had TSC2 mutation. Most patients with TSC1 and TSC2 mutations coexisted with other oncogenic gene alterations. TP53 was the most frequent concurrent gene (n = 53), followed with ERBB family genes (n = 24) and KRAS (n = 15). Compared to squamous cell carcinoma, TSC1/2 mutation was slightly more common in adenocarcinoma (53.7% vs 46.3%). 61.2% TSC1/2 mutant patients were male and 88.1% patients had former/current smoking history. Kaplan–Meier analysis showed that the patients harboring TSC1 mutation had a median OS of 14.1 months, whereas patients with TSC2 mutation had a median OS 110.6 months. However, there was not a statistically difference (P = 0.201). Conclusions: TSC1/2 mutation may define a unique population of NSCLC, which often coexists with other oncogenic gene alterations such as TP53 mutation. The function of TSC1/2 mutation and the value of TSC1/2 as therapeutic target in NSCLC are under investigation.