SARS-CoV-2 is the causative agent for the COVID-19 pandemic. COVID-19 has necessitated rapid changes in surgical practice and organisation through both the initial peak and ongoing recovery period 1. SARS-CoV-2 infects cells by interacting with the host cell surface protein ACE2 and utilises TMPRSS2 in viral spike protein priming to facilitate cell entry (Fig. 1a) 2. Whilst COVID-19 is predominantly a respiratory disease approximately 15% of patients have concurrent gastrointestinal
symptoms 3. SARS-CoV-2 RNA and live virus have been identified in stool from COVID-19 patients and SARS-CoV-2 readily infects intestinal organoids 4-6. Despite these circumstantial data, gastrointestinal
transmission has not yet been formally confirmed. Cancers commonly express different genes from the tissue of origin and it is largely unexplored whether tumours can be infected with SARS-CoV-2. We
sought to explore the expression of ACE2 and TMPRSS2 in large publicly available normal tissue and pan-cancer expression data sets to understand whether levels of these genes identify susceptible
tissues.SJAB is supported by an Advanced Clinician Scientist Fellowship grant from Cancer Research UK C14094/A27178; and core funding from Wellcome and MRC to the Wellcome-MRC Cambridge Stem Cell Institute
