Insights into early-onset colorectal cancer from a single-nucleus RNA-seq atlas of colorectal cancer across the age continuum.

In microsatellite-stable colorectal cancer, tumors from patients under 50 show increased stromal and decreased epithelial proportions, confirmed in an external cohort of 712 MSS cases.

• Why it matters: Early-onset colorectal cancer is rising and may differ biologically from average-onset disease, but age-linked molecular features are not well defined.
• What they did: Built a single-nucleus RNA-seq atlas from 189 primary CRC tumors (54 EO-CRC, 135 AO-CRC) across eight decades, stratifying by microsatellite status and modeling age continuously or as EO-CRC versus AO-CRC.
• The result: Young-patient MSS tumors show epithelial programs with higher long noncoding RNAs and FN1, plus left-sided EO-CRC linked to stronger cell-cell interactions and EMT-related FN1/GDF/ACTIVIN signaling.

AI summary of the abstract · may contain errors · not medical advice · read the paper.