Tumor Mutational Burden Is a Potential Predictive Biomarker for Response to Immune Checkpoint Inhibitors in Patients With Advanced Biliary Tract Cancer
PURPOSE Patients with advanced biliary tract cancers (BTCs) have a dismal prognosis. This multisite, single-institution study analyzed the efficacy and safety of immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) in patients with advanced BTC. MATERIALS AND METHODS The prospectively maintained institutional database was searched for patients with advanced BTC. Electronic medical records of the patients with advanced BTC treated with an ICI that included programmed death-1 or programmed death-ligand 1 blockers were retrospectively reviewed to obtain data on patient characteristics, tumor characteristics including molecular biomarkers, detailed treatment, response characteristics, survival, and toxicities. The analysis included overall response rate, survival, and correlation between survival and molecular biomarkers. RESULTS The institutional database query identified 47 patients with advanced BTC who received at least one dose of an ICI; 11 (24%) patients in the first-line setting and the rest of the patients had refractory disease. The median age of the cohort was 62 years, and 51% were female. The overall response rate was 10.6%, with a disease control rate of 53.2%. The median progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival were 3.6 months and 6.9 months, respectively. Biomarker analysis revealed improved PFS in patients with tumor mutational burden > 5 mutations per megabase (median PFS: 6.4 v 2.2 months; P = .0027). No unexpected adverse events were observed. CONCLUSION ICIs are well tolerated and have modest antitumor activity in patients with advanced BTC. The study result supports the exploration of tumor mutational burden as a potential predictive biomarker for response to ICIs in patients with advanced BTC.
Clinical outcomes of neoadjuvant treatment strategies in localized mismatch repair-deficient rectal cancer.
192 Background: Rectal cancer treatment paradigm has been evolving over time. Historically, for locally advanced rectal cancer, standard therapy (ST) consisted of neoadjuvant chemoradiation followed by surgery and adjuvant chemotherapy. Recently, total neoadjuvant treatment (TNT) approach that delivers both neoadjuvant chemotherapy (CAPOX or FOLFOX) and chemoradiation (or radiation only) prior to surgery is increasingly being utilized. The prognostic and predictive values of mismatch repair deficient (dMMR) in rectal cancer is not well characterized. Most dMMR patients receive the same treatment as MMR proficient (pMMR) patients although there is limited data that dMMR rectal cancer patients may not have the same level of benefits from neoadjuvant treatment. This retrospective study aims to evaluate the clinicopathological/molecular characteristics, disease response, and clinical outcomes in dMMR localized rectal cancer patients. Methods: A retrospective analysis was conducted on consecutive adult patients with a diagnosis of dMMR rectal cancer who were treated at Mayo Clinic between January 2000 to September 2021. Patients who presented with concurrent primary non-colorectal malignancies were excluded. The distributions of demographics, clinicopathological features, biomarkers, and outcome data were collected. Survival was assessed using Kaplan-Meier curves and Cox models were stratified by treatment arms to determine significance of treatment strategies. Results: Forty-one patients were identified with a median age of 45.3 years. Thirty (73.2%) pts were male. The most common MMR were loss of MSH2 and MSH6 (12/42; 29.3%) followed by loss of MLH1 and PMS2 (10/42; 24.4%) and solitary loss of MSH2 (4/42; 9.8%). The treatment, pathological response, and clinical outcomes are listed in table. With a median follow up of 101 months, only 6 patients (14.3%) died and median overall survival was not reached. Conclusions: Our findings showed dMMR localized rectal cancer responded to both ST and TNT with good clinical outcomes.[Table: see text]