{"entity":{"id":"lymphoepithelial-carcinoma-lung","kind":"cancer","name":"Lymphoepithelial carcinoma of the lung","aka":["Lymphoepithelioma-like carcinoma of the lung","Pulmonary lymphoepithelioma-like carcinoma","LELC of the lung","EBV-associated lung carcinoma"],"tldr":"Lymphoepithelial carcinoma of the lung is a rare lung cancer, seen mostly in East Asian non-smokers, in which cancer cells sit in a dense crowd of immune cells and usually carry the Epstein-Barr virus, like nasopharyngeal cancer. It is treated as a squamous lung cancer, and its high PD-L1 levels have made immunotherapy a natural choice.","summary":"The 2021 WHO classification moved lymphoepithelial carcinoma from the large cell group into squamous cell carcinoma, on the strength of its squamous immunophenotype (Nicholson 2022). Histologically it is a poorly differentiated carcinoma with a heavy lymphocytic infiltrate, and in East Asian patients it is nearly always associated with Epstein-Barr virus. In 66 patients from Taiwan, PD-L1 was overexpressed in 75.8 percent of tumours and EGFR mutation found in 12.1 percent, with no KRAS, BRAF, ALK or ROS1 alterations (Chang 2015). Targeted sequencing of 27 Chinese cases found no classic lung driver apart from one ERBB2 amplification and one KRAS mutation, but mutations in epigenetic regulators in 78 percent (Modern Pathology 2020).\n\nHow it differs from its parent: it lacks the smoking-related mutational burden of ordinary squamous cell carcinoma, is virus-associated, and has a better reported prognosis in the series above; its biology is closer to nasopharyngeal carcinoma, which the corpus covers.\n\nHow common: no incidence figure is published.\n\nTreatment: as squamous cell carcinoma of the lung by stage, with platinum chemotherapy and, given the PD-L1 findings, checkpoint inhibitors in advanced disease; the sources read are pathology series, not treatment trials, and none exists for the entity.","asOf":"2026-09-24","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lymphoepithelioma-like_carcinoma","links":[{"label":"Nicholson 2022, JTO: the 2021 WHO classification of lung tumours","url":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtho.2021.11.003"},{"label":"Chang 2015, Lung Cancer: PD-L1 is highly expressed in 66 lung lymphoepithelioma-like carcinomas","url":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lungcan.2015.03.017"},{"label":"Modern Pathology 2020: genomic profiles and PD-L1 expression of 29 primary lymphoepithelioma-like carcinomas of the lung","url":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41379-019-0391-9"}],"tags":["subtype-page","wave4","lung"],"related":["nsclc","lung-squamous-cell-carcinoma","basaloid-squamous-cell-carcinoma-lung","nasopharyngeal"],"cancers":[],"sections":[],"technologies":[],"targets":[],"drugs":["pembrolizumab"],"companies":[],"institutions":[],"pathways":[],"terms":[],"trials":[],"people":[],"bottlenecks":[],"keyPapers":[],"journals":[],"dependsOn":[],"notes":[],"group":"lung","burden":"Rare and concentrated in East Asia: the largest series in the sources read hold 66 patients (Chang 2015) and 29 patients (Modern Pathology 2020), both from China or Taiwan. No registry share exists.","subtypes":["EBV-positive lymphoepithelial carcinoma of the lung (the usual form in East Asia)","EBV-negative lymphoepithelial carcinoma of the lung"],"biomarkers":["EBV-encoded RNA in situ hybridisation","PD-L1 (overexpressed in about three quarters)","p40 positive, TTF-1 negative","Epigenetic regulator mutations (research)"],"standardOfCare":[{"setting":"All stages","approach":"Treated as squamous cell carcinoma of the lung; checkpoint inhibitors in advanced disease on the PD-L1 findings, without a dedicated trial.","refs":["lung-squamous-cell-carcinoma","pembrolizumab"]}],"stateOfArt":[],"history":[],"pipeline":[],"openProblems":[],"parent":"nsclc"},"route":"/cancers/lymphoepithelial-carcinoma-lung/","neighbours":{"cancer":[{"id":"basaloid-squamous-cell-carcinoma-lung","kind":"cancer","name":"Basaloid squamous cell carcinoma of the lung","route":"/cancers/basaloid-squamous-cell-carcinoma-lung/"},{"id":"nasopharyngeal","kind":"cancer","name":"Nasopharyngeal carcinoma","route":"/cancers/nasopharyngeal/"},{"id":"nsclc","kind":"cancer","name":"Non-small-cell lung cancer","route":"/cancers/nsclc/"},{"id":"lung-squamous-cell-carcinoma","kind":"cancer","name":"Squamous cell carcinoma of the lung","route":"/cancers/lung-squamous-cell-carcinoma/"}],"drug":[{"id":"pembrolizumab","kind":"drug","name":"Pembrolizumab","route":"/drugs/pembrolizumab/"}]}}