Emerging Blood-Based Biomarkers for Predicting Immunotherapy Response in NSCLC

Abstract

Immunotherapy with Immune Checkpoint Inhibitors (ICIs) has demonstrated a profitable performance for Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer (NSCLC) cancer treatment in some patients; however, there is still a percentage of patients in whom immunotherapy does not provide the desired results regarding beneficial outcomes. Therefore, obtaining predictive biomarkers for ICI response will improve the treatment management in clinical practice. In this sense, liquid biopsy appears as a promising method to obtain samples in a minimally invasive and non-biased way. In spite of its evident potential, the use of these circulating biomarkers is still very limited in the real clinical practice, mainly due to the huge heterogeneity among the techniques, the lack of consensus, and the limited number of patients included in these previous studies. In this work, we review the pros and cons of the different proposed biomarkers, such as soluble PD-L1, circulating non-coding RNA, circulating immune cells, peripheral blood cytokines, and ctDNA, obtained from liquid biopsy to predict response to ICI treatment at baseline and to monitor changes in tumor and tumor microenvironment during the course of the treatment in NSCLC patients.

SECTM1 is upregulated in immuno-hot tumors and predicts immunotherapeutic efficacy in multiple cancers

“…Multiple biomarkers obtained from liquid biopsy, including soluble PD-L1, circulating immune cells, circulating noncoding RNA, peripheral blood cytokines, and circulating tumor DNA, could predict the responses to ICIs at baseline and monitor changes in the TIME during the treatment. 25 Previous research indicated that SECTM1 could be detected in serum from melanoma patients but not normal donors, 13 we also examined the predictive value of circulating SECTM1 and uncovered that circulating SECTM1 was positively correlated with tumor-expressed SECTM1 and could effectively predict the responses to ICIs. These data raised the possibility that SECTM1 could be used as serum biomarker.…”

Integrated single-cell and transcriptome sequencing analyses determines a chromatin regulator-based signature for evaluating prognosis in lung adenocarcinoma

“…Yu and his colleagues disclosed CD273 was upregulated in LUAD, and was correlated with lymph node metastasis ( 48 ). Likewise, accumulating studies have indicated the close association between the efficacy of immunotherapy and the CD274 expression ( 49 ). VTCN1, also named B7-H4, belongs to the co-stimulatory B7 family molecules and is associated with a poor prognosis in multiple cancer types ( 50 – 52 ).…”

Pan-cancer analysis of super-enhancer-induced LINC00862 and validation as a SIRT1-promoting factor in cervical cancer and gastric cancer

“…Therefore, it is vital to select the exact patients for immunotherapy. Many new biomarkers, such as tumorous mutations, circulating tumor DNA and gut microbiota, are emerging [ 10 , 11 ]. Among them, non-coding RNAs, including miRNA, lncRNA and circRNA, have intrigued numerous researchers.…”