Comprehensive analyses of genomic features and mutational signatures in adenosquamous carcinoma of the lung.

Adenosquamous carcinoma (ASC) of the lung is a relatively rare tumor with strong aggressiveness and poor prognosis. The analysis of mutational signatures is becoming routine in cancer genomics and has implications for pathogenesis, classification, and prognosis. However, the distribution of mutational signatures in ASC patients has not been evaluated. In this study, we sought to reveal the landscape of genomic mutations and mutational signatures in ASC. Next-generation sequencing (NGS) technology was used to retrieve genomic information for 124 ASC patients. and were the most prevalent somatic mutations observed, and were present in 66.9% and 54.8% of patients, respectively. (21%), (21%), and (18.5%) mutations were also observed. An analysis of gene fusion/rearrangement characteristics revealed a total of 64 gene fusions. The highest frequency of variants was determined for fusions, with six classical and two intergenic fusions, followed by three fusions and one fusion. 19del (45.6%), and L858R (38.2%) and its amplification (29.4%) were the top three mutations. We extracted mutational signatures from NGS data and then performed a statistical analysis in order to search for genomic and clinical features that could be linked to mutation signatures. Amongst signatures cataloged at COSMIC, the most prevalent, high-frequency base changes were for C > T; and the five most frequent signatures, from highest to lowest, were 2, 3, 1, 30, and 13. Signatures 1 and 6 were determined to be associated with age and tumor stage, respectively, and Signatures 22 and 30 were significantly related to smoking. We additionally evaluated the correlation between tumor mutational burden (TMB) and genomic variations. We found that mutations , , and were associated with high TMB. The homologous recombination repair (HRR) pathway-related gene mutation displayed a slightly higher TMB than those without mutations. Our study is the first to report comprehensive genomic features and mutational signatures in Chinese ASC patients. Results obtained from our study will help the scientific community better understand signature-related mutational processes in ASC.