A B S T R A C T PurposeWe assessed whether chemotherapy selection based on in situ ERCC1 and RRM1 protein levels would improve survival in patients with advanced non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC).
Patients and MethodsEligible patients were randomly assigned 2:1 to the trial's experimental arm, which consisted of gemcitabine/carboplatin if RRM1 and ERCC1 were low, docetaxel/carboplatin if RRM1 was high and ERCC1 was low, gemcitabine/docetaxel if RRM1 was low and ERCC1 was high, and docetaxel/vinorelbine if both were high. In the control arm, patients received gemcitabine/ carboplatin. The trial was powered for a 32% improvement in 6-month progression-free survival (PFS).
ResultsOf 331 patients registered, 275 were eligible. The median number of cycles given was four in both arms. A tumor rebiopsy specifically for expression analysis was required in 17% of patients. The median time from informed consent to expression analysis was 11 days. We found no statistically significant differences between the experimental arm and the control arm in PFS (6.1 months v 6.9 months) or overall survival (11.0 months v 11.3 months). A subset analysis revealed that patients with low levels for both proteins who received the same treatment in both treatment arms had a statistically better PFS (P ϭ .02) in the control arm (8.1 months) compared with the experimental arm (5.0 months).
ConclusionThis demonstrates that protein expression analysis for therapeutic decision making is feasible in newly diagnosed patients with advanced-stage NSCLC. A tumor rebiopsy is safe, required in 17%, and acceptable to 89% (47 of 53) of patients.
Among 157 patients treated with ICIs, 65 (41.4%) experienced at least one irAE. Median time to the first irAE onset was 28 days (IQR:15-56). Baseline clinicopathologic characteristics were well balanced between patients who developed irAEs and those who did not. Median tumor mutational burden (TMB) was significantly higher among patients with irAEs compared to those without (14.4 vs 8.4 mutations/megabase [mut/Mb], P <0.01). Patients who developed at least one irAE had a significantly higher objective response rate (26.3% versus 3.3%, P <0.001), and significantly longer median progressionfree survival (mPFS, 4.1 vs 1.3 months, HR: 0.30 [0.20-0.43, P <0.001]) and median overall survival (mOS, 14.1 vs 2.9 months, HR: 0.32 [0.21-0.48], P <0.001). The proportion of patients who were progression-free at 6, 9, and 12 weeks was significantly higher in patients who developed early irAEs compared to those who did not develop early irAEs (6 weeks: 89.5% vs 69.5%, P ¼0.01; 9 weeks: 71.1% vs 40%, P ¼0.001; 12 weeks: 65.8% vs. 31.6%, P <0.001). The median TMB was also significantly higher in patients who developed early irAEs (14.5 vs 8.7 mut/Mb, P <0.01). Conclusion: Patients with SCLC treated with ICIs who developed early irAEs had a higher TMB and enhanced antitumor responses compared to those who did not develop irAEs. Whether a higher TMB is associated with the development of irAEs remains to be determined mechanistically.
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