Gene set enrichment analysis to evaluate expression of autoantigens in lung cancer

e22048 Background: There is a well-established association between certain autoimmune diseases and the development of specific malignancies. It has been demonstrated that myositis-specific autoantigens are expressed at higher levels in tumors associated with myositis compared to normal tissue, suggesting that immune responses to antigens expressed in nascent tumors may contribute to the autoimmune process. Whether this observation is a general feature of autoantigen expression in tumor tissue, and whether the relative expression of these antigens is enriched in relation to the rest of the tumor transcriptome is currently unknown. Methods: Tumor tissue from ten lung cancer biopsies (adenocarcinoma (4), carcinoid (4), and squamous cell carcinoma (2)) and normal lung from the same patients were obtained. Total RNA was extracted and hybridized to Illumina Sentrix BeadChips. Hiearchical clustering was used to visualize the expression levels of 146 known autoantigens. Gene Set Enrichment Analysis was performed ...