All That Is Small Is Not a Small-Cell Carcinoma: Thoracic SMARCA4-Deficient Undifferentiated Tumors Masquerading as SCLC.

ABSTRACT

Small-cell lung carcinoma (SCLC) cell lines have been widely utilized as a preclinical model of this highly aggressive disease. However, since their creation decades ago, novel tumor entities have been defined that might clinicopathologically mimic SCLC, which notably includes thoracic SMARCA4-deficient undifferentiated tumor (SMARCA4-UT). Multiomic reassessment of the presumed SCLC cell lines with high YAP1 expression reveals that nearly all of these tumors represent unsuspected SMARCA4-UT. See related article by Ng et al., p. 1846.