Aarhus, Denmark (UroToday.com) Dr. Woonyoung Choi from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland presented data characterizing transcriptomic data from a cohort of neuroendocrine bladder cancer variant histology patients. 24 neuroendocrine cases and 51 conventional muscle-invasive bladder cancer (MIBC) cases were acquired and RNAseq whole transcriptome analyses were performed on FFPE blocks. Unsupervised hierarchical clustering revealed two distinct clusters separating neuroendocrine variants from conventional urothelial MIBC cases. Neuroendocrine tumors were found to be strongly enriched with DLL3, CD56, and EZH2, along with the TCGA’s neuronal differentiation and development genes that were found to be associated with favorable responses to atezolizumab (ImVigor 210 trial). Neuroendocrine tumors also were found to suppress immune cell activation and inhibit the TGFb pathway.
Abstract take-home message:
- Neuroendocrine bladder tumors are enriched with DLL3, CD56, and EZH2, along with suppressed immune pathway gene expression signatures
Presented by: Woonyoung Choi, MS, Ph.D. Assistant Professor of Urology and Director of Genomics for the Greenberg Bladder Cancer Institute, Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland
Written by: Dr. Vikram M. Narayan (@VikramNarayan), Urologic Oncology Fellow with Ashish M. Kamat, MD (@UroDocAsh), Professor, Department of Urology, Division of Surgery, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX at the 17th meeting of the International Bladder Cancer Network, (IBCN, #IBCN2019) October 3rd – 5th, 2019 in Aarhus, Denmark.