Purpose Since tumor mutational burden (TMB) and gene expression profiling (GEP) have complementary effects, they may have improved predictive power when used in combination. Here, we investigated the ability of TMB and GEP to predict the immunotherapy response in patients with non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and assessed if this combination can improve predictive power compared to that when used individually.
Materials and Methods This retrospective cohort study included 30 patients with NSCLC who received immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICI) therapy at the Seoul National University Bundang Hospital. programmed cell death-ligand-1 (PD-L1) protein expression was assessed using immunohistochemistry, and TMB was measured by targeted deep sequencing. Gene expression was determined using NanoString nCounter analysis for the PanCancer IO360 panel, and enrichment analysis were performed.
Results Eleven patients (36.7%) showed a durable clinical benefit (DCB), whereas 19 (63.3%) showed no durable benefit (NDB). TMB and enrichment scores (ES) showed significant differences between the DCB and NDB groups (p=0.044 and p=0.017, respectively); however, no significant correlations were observed among TMB, ES, and PD-L1. ES was the best single biomarker for predicting DCB (area under the curve [AUC], 0.794), followed by TMB (AUC, 0.679) and PD-L1 (AUC, 0.622). TMB and ES showed the highest AUC (0.837) among other combinations (AUC [TMB and PD-L1], 0.777; AUC [PD-L1 and ES], 0.763) and was similar to that of all biomarkers used together (0.832).
Conclusion The combination of TMB and ES may be an effective predictive tool to identify patients with NSCLC patients who would possibly benefit from ICI therapies.
Citations
Citations to this article as recorded by
Microdroplet-enhanced chip platform for high-throughput immunotherapy marker screening from extracellular vesicle RNAs and membrane proteins Chuanhao Tang, Zaizai Dong, Shi Yan, Bing Liu, Zhiying Wang, Long Cheng, Feng Liu, Hong Sun, Yimeng Du, Lu Pan, Yuhao Zhou, Zhiyuan Jin, Libo Zhao, Nan Wu, Lingqian Chang, Xiaojie Xu Biosensors and Bioelectronics.2025; 267: 116748. CrossRef
Exploring the ferroptosis-related gene lipocalin 2 as a potential biomarker for sepsis-induced acute respiratory distress syndrome based on machine learning Jiayi Zhan, Junming Chen, Liyan Deng, Yining Lu, Lianxiang Luo Biochimica et Biophysica Acta (BBA) - Molecular Basis of Disease.2024; 1870(4): 167101. CrossRef
Evaluation of Blood Tumor Mutation Burden for the Efficacy of Second-Line Atezolizumab Treatment in Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer: BUDDY Trial Cheol-Kyu Park, Ha Ra Jun, Hyung-Joo Oh, Ji-Young Lee, Hyun-Ju Cho, Young-Chul Kim, Jeong Eun Lee, Seong Hoon Yoon, Chang Min Choi, Jae Cheol Lee, Sung Yong Lee, Shin Yup Lee, Sung-Min Chun, In-Jae Oh Cells.2023; 12(9): 1246. CrossRef
Unveiling the role of regulatory T cells in the tumor microenvironment of pancreatic cancer through single-cell transcriptomics and in vitro experiments Wei Xu, Wenjia Zhang, Dongxu Zhao, Qi Wang, Man Zhang, Qiang Li, Wenxin Zhu, Chunfang Xu Frontiers in Immunology.2023;[Epub] CrossRef
Facilitating “Omics” for Phenotype Classification Using a User-Friendly AI-Driven Platform: Application in Cancer Prognostics Uraquitan Lima Filho, Tiago Alexandre Pais, Ricardo Jorge Pais BioMedInformatics.2023; 3(4): 1071. CrossRef
Current state and challenges of emerging biomarkers for immunotherapy in hepatocellular carcinoma (Review) Mo Cheng, Xiufeng Zheng, Jing Wei, Ming Liu Experimental and Therapeutic Medicine.2023;[Epub] CrossRef
Molecular classification of cancers has been significantly improved patient outcomes through the implementation of treatment protocols tailored to the abnormalities present in each patient's cancer cells. Breast cancer represents the poster child with marked improvements in outcome occurring due to the implementation of targeted therapies for estrogen receptor or human epidermal growth factor receptor-2 positive breast cancers. Important subtypes with characteristic molecular features as potential therapeutic targets are likely to exist for all tumor lineages including hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) but have yet to be discovered and validated as targets. Because each tumor accumulates hundreds or thousands of genomic and epigenetic alterations of critical genes, it is challenging to identify and validate candidate tumor aberrations as therapeutic targets or biomarkers that predict prognosis or response to therapy.
Therefore, there is an urgent need to devise new experimental and analytical strategies to overcome this problem. Systems biology approaches integrating multiple data sets and technologies analyzing patient tissues holds great promise for the identification of novel therapeutic targets and linked predictive biomarkers allowing implementation of personalized medicine for HCC patients.
Citations
Citations to this article as recorded by
Systems Challenges of Hepatic Carcinomas: A Review Dhatri Madduru, Johny Ijaq, Sujata Dhar, Saumyadip Sarkar, Naresh Poondla, Partha S. Das, Silvia Vasquez, Prashanth Suravajhala Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hepatology.2019; 9(2): 233. CrossRef
Epigenetic regulation of hepatocellular carcinoma in non-alcoholic fatty liver disease Yuan Tian, Vincent Wai-Sun Wong, Henry Lik-Yuen Chan, Alfred Sze-Lok Cheng Seminars in Cancer Biology.2013; 23(6): 471. CrossRef
The Impact of Network Medicine in Gastroenterology and Hepatology György Baffy Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology.2013; 11(10): 1240. CrossRef