Clinical molecular subtyping reveals intrinsic mesenchymal reprogramming in gastric cancer cells

Abstract

The mesenchymal cancer phenotype is known to be clinically related to treatment resistance and a poor prognosis. We identified gene signature-based molecular subtypes of gastric cancer (GC, n = 547) based on transcriptome data and validated their prognostic and predictive utility in multiple external cohorts. We subsequently examined their associations with tumor microenvironment (TME) features by employing cellular deconvolution methods and sequencing isolated GC populations. We further performed spatial transcriptomics analysis and immunohistochemistry, demonstrating the presence of GC cells in a partial epithelial-mesenchymal transition state. We performed network and pharmacogenomic database analyses to identify TGF-beta signaling as a driver pathway and, thus, a therapeutic target. We further validated its expression in tumor cells in preclinical models and a single-cell dataset. Finally, we demonstrated that inhibition of TGF-beta signaling negated mesenchymal/stem-like behavior and therapy resistance in GC cell lines and mouse xenograft models. In summary, we show that the mesenchymal GC phenotype could be driven by epithelial cancer cell-intrinsic TGF-beta signaling and propose therapeutic strategies based on targeting the tumor-intrinsic mesenchymal reprogramming of medically intractable GC.