Elucidation of radiation-resistant clones by a serial study of intratumor heterogeneity before and after stereotactic radiotherapy in lung cancer

Stereotactic radiotherapy (SRT) for inoperable stage I non-small cell lung cancer has shown promising results and is now an alternative therapy for this disease. Several reports have detailed changes in mutation profiles after treatment with chemotherapy; however, such changes after SRT for lung cancer have not been reported. A patient who received SRT for lung cancer developed local recurrence 9 months after treatment and underwent surgery in our department. Using bronchoscopically biopsied and surgically resected specimens, we performed targeted sequencing of 53 lung cancer-related genes and compared the tumor mutation profiles before and after SRT. Identical mutations were detected from tumor specimens collected before and after SRT, and the specimens were confirmed to be clonal. However, the number of mutations decreased after SRT, suggesting that it induced mutation selection. Analyses of the statistical inference of clonal population structure showed that this evolving heterogeneous genomic landscape may be caused by heterogeneous responsiveness to SRT.