Background: The hypothesis of an infectious etiology of the formerly named bronchiolo-alveolar carcinoma (BAC) has raised controversy. We investigated tumor lung tissues from five patients with former BAC histology using high-throughput sequencing technologies to discover potential viruses present in this type of lung cancer. Around 180 million single reads of 100 bases were generated for each BAC sample.
Results: None of the reads showed a significant similarity for Jaagsiekte sheep retrovirus (JSRV) and no other viruses were found except for endogenous retroviruses.
Conclusions: In conclusion, we have demonstrated the absence of JSRV and other known human viruses in five samples of well-characterized lepidic adenocarcinoma.