RESUMO
Background: Solid-predominant lung adenocarcinoma (SPA), which is one of the high-risk subtypes with poor prognosis and unsatisfactory response to chemotherapy and targeted therapy in lung adenocarcinoma, remains molecular profile unclarified. Weighted correlation network analysis (WGCNA) was used for data mining, especially for studying biological networks based on pairwise correlations between variables. This study aimed to identify disease-related protein co-expression networks associated with early-stage SPA. Methods: We assessed cancerous cells laser-microdissected from formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded (FFPE) tissues of a SPA group (n = 5), referencing a low-risk subtype, a lepidic predominant subtype group (LPA) (n = 4), and another high-risk subtype, micropapillary predominant subtype (MPA) group (n = 3) and performed mass spectrometry-based proteomic analysis. Disease-related co-expression networks associated with the SPA subtype were identified by WGCNA and their upstream regulators and causal networks were predicted by Ingenuity Pathway Analysis. Results: Among the forty WGCNA network modules identified, two network modules were found to be associated significantly with the SPA subtype. Canonical enriched pathways were highly associated with cellular growth, proliferation, and immune response. Upregulated HLA class I molecules HLA-G and HLA-B implicated high mutation burden and T cell activation in the SPA subtype. Upstream analysis implicated the involvement of highly activated oncogenic regulators, MYC, MLXIPL, MYCN, the redox master regulator NFE2L2, and the highly inhibited LARP1, leading to oncogenic IRES-dependent translation, and also regulators of the adaptive immune response, including highly activated IFNG, TCRD, CD3-TCR, CD8A, CD8B, CD3, CD80/CD86, and highly inhibited LILRB2. Interestingly, the immune checkpoint molecule HLA-G, which is the counterpart of LILRB2, was highly expressed characteristically in the SPA subtype and might be associated with antitumor immunity. Conclusion: Our findings provide a disease molecular profile based on protein co-expression networks identified for the high-risk solid predominant adenocarcinoma, which will help develop future therapeutic strategies.
RESUMO
Background: Periodic fever, aphthous stomatitis, pharyngitis, and cervical adenitis (PFAPA syndrome), and Kawasaki disease (KD) are both considered to be disorders of the innate immune system, and the potential role of inflammasome activation in the immunopathogenesis of both diseases has been previously described. Case presentation: Herein, we report the clinical courses of three patients who presented a rare combination of PFAPA syndrome and KD. Two patients who presented KD later developed the PFAPA syndrome, of whom one developed recurrent KD 2 years after the initial diagnosis. The third patient developed KD one year after the onset of PFAPA syndrome. The presence of both of these conditions within individual patients, combined with the knowledge that inflammasome activation is involved in both PFAPA syndrome and KD, suggests a shared background of inflammatory dysregulation. To elucidate the mechanism underlying shared inflammatory dysregulation, we investigated the roles of Nod-like receptors (NLRs) and their downstream inflammasome-related genes. All the patients had a frameshift variant in CARD8 (CARD8-FS). A previous study demonstrated a higher frequency of CARD8-FS, whose product loses CARD8 activity and activates the NLRP3 inflammasome, in patients with the PFAPA syndrome. Additionally, the NLRP3 inflammasome is known to be activated in patients with KD. Together, these results suggest that the CARD8-FS variant may also be essential in KD pathogenesis. As such, we analyzed the CARD8 variants among patients with KD. However, we found no difference in the variant frequency between patients with KD and the general Japanese population. Conclusions: We report the clinical courses of three patients with a rare combination of PFAPA syndrome and KD. All the patients had the CARD8-FS variant. However, we could not find a difference in the variant frequency between patients with KD and the general Japanese population. As the frequency of KD is much higher than that of PFAPA among Japanese patients, and the cause of KD is multifactorial, it is possible that only a small portion of patients with KD harbor CARD8-FS as a causative gene.