Abstract Background and Objective Management of von Hippel–Lindau (VHL) disease is challenging due to multisystem involvement and limited systemic treatment options. Belzutifan has shown promising efficacy in clinical trials; however, real-world data remain limited. We aimed to evaluate its effectiveness and safety in a real-world cohort. Methods We conducted a retrospective study of 59 patients with VHL disease treated with belzutifan between August 2021 and January 2026. Objective response rates (ORR) for renal cell carcinoma (RCC), central nervous system hemangioblastomas (CNS HB), and pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors (pNET) were assessed by an independent radiologist. Retinal hemangioblastoma outcomes were evaluated through ophthalmology records by chart review. Results Median follow-up was 29 months. ORR was 27.6%, 39.6%, and 85.7% for RCC, CNS HB, and pNET, respectively. Among 13 patients with retinal hemangioblastomas (20 eyes), 17 eyes (85%) showed improvement. At data cutoff, 47 patients (79.6%) remained on treatment, while 12 (20.3%) discontinued (7 due to adverse events, 3 to disease progression, and 2 to other reasons). The most common adverse event was anemia (86.4%). Grade ≥3 events occurred in 10 patients (16.9%). The procedure rate per patient-year decreased from 0.35 in the 3 years prior to treatment to 0.08 during follow-up (Incidence Rate Ratio, 0.23; 95% CI, 0.12–0.47; P < 0.001) Conclusions Belzutifan demonstrated efficacy across VHL-associated lesions, with favorable safety profile. Most adverse events were grade 1–2. A reduction in procedure rate was observed after treatment initiation.
Automated Phenotypic Characterization in Rare Hematologic Malignancies Using a Large Language Model–Based Framework
Abstract Background Diagnosis and risk stratification in rare hematologic malignancies such as myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPNs) – polycythemia vera (PV), essential thrombocythemia (ET), and myelofibrosis (MF) – require expert review of longitudinal, heterogeneous clinical records. This process is cognitively demanding, inconsistently applied, and difficult to scale beyond tertiary centers. No automated phenotyping workflow currently exists for hematologic malignancies. Methods A HIPAA-compliant large language model (LLM) framework for phenotyping MPN was developed to integrate (i) rule-based retrieval of bone marrow biopsy reports, clinical notes, and structured laboratory results from the electronic health record (EHR); (ii) zero-shot extraction of diagnostic and prognostic variables from unstructured text using GPT-4 Turbo; (iii) a clinician-informed source-prioritization algorithm to reconcile conflicting multi-source data; (iv) WHO/ICC-criteria–based diagnostic classification; and (v) NCCN-based risk stratification using the conventional risk model for PV, IPSET-thrombosis for ET, and DIPSS, DIPSS-plus, and MIPSS70/MIPSS70+ v2 for MF. Patients were identified via MPN-related ICD-9/10 codes; cases met 2017 WHO criteria or had a hematologist-documented diagnosis, and controls did not. The cohort was split into a prompt-development set (n = 60) and a held-out test set (n = 450; 75 cases and 75 controls per disease). Ground truth was established by independent dual-clinician chart review with consensus adjudication. LLM performance was evaluated against the ground truth: variable-level extraction using accuracy, F1 score, and Cohen’s kappa; patient-level diagnostic classification using sensitivity, specificity, and Cohen’s kappa; and prognostic risk stratification (among confirmed cases) using accuracy, weighted F1 score, and quadratic-weighted Cohen’s kappa. Wilson 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were used for proportions and bootstrap 95% CIs with 500 resamples for F1 scores. Results The held-out test set included 450 patients (PV: 150; ET: 150; MF: 150) with pathology reports and structured laboratory results, and 172 patients (PV: 52; ET: 55; MF: 65) with clinical notes. From pathology reports, overall variable extraction accuracy and F1 score were 99% (95% CI, 98–100) and 1.00 (0.99–1.00) for PV, 100% (99–100) and 0.99 (0.96–1.00) for ET, and 100% (99–100) and 0.99 (0.97–1.00) for MF. From clinical notes, overall accuracy and F1 score were 96% (91–100) and 0.94 (0.85–1.00) for PV, 100% (100–100) and 1.00 (1.00–1.00) for ET, and 100% (99–100) and 0.98 (0.95–1.00) for MF. Diagnostic sensitivity was 100% (95% CI, 95.1–100.0) for PV, ET, and MF; specificity was 98.7% (92.8–99.8) for PV and 100% (95.1–100.0) for both ET and MF, with Cohen’s kappa of 0.99 for PV and 1.00 for ET and MF. Risk stratification accuracy was 100% with weighted F1 score of 1.00 and quadratic-weighted Cohen’s kappa of 1.00 across all three diseases. A pre-specified source-ablation analysis showed that pathology reports alone were sufficient for diagnosis (sensitivity 98.7% for PV, 100% for ET, 96.0% for MF; specificity 100% across all three subtypes) but inadequate for prognostication (accuracy 69.3% for PV, 93.3% for ET, 77.3% for MF). Adding clinical notes to pathology reports recovered full prognostic accuracy of 100% across all three diseases. Conclusions This first-in-class automated framework achieved expert-level performance for MPN diagnosis and risk stratification from real-world EHR data, establishing a foundation for scalable, standardized phenotyping in rare hematologic malignancies. Prospective, multi-site validation is warranted before clinical deployment.
Leveraging large language models (LLM) to guide adjuvant treatment recommendations for renal cell carcinoma (RCC) after nephrectomy.
567 Background: Selecting adjuvant therapy after nephrectomy for renal cell carcinoma (RCC) requires reviewing scattered electronic health records (EHR) and performing accurate eligibility and risk assessments. Large Language Models (LLMs) may assist physicians by extracting key clinical data and generating evidence-based recommendations between active surveillance and adjuvant pembrolizumab. Methods: We selected RCC patients who underwent nephrectomy at Mayo Clinic in Arizona, Florida, and Minnesota between December 2021 and September 2025. Data extraction from EHRs was performed by a HIPAA-compliant LLM (GPT-5 and Gemini 2.0-Flash-001) and compared to human labels. Data on patients’ demographics, medical history, pathology, laboratory results, and imaging were collected. GPT-5 generated treatment recommendations using a structured prompt that incorporated patients’ features and relevant clinical information that is available to clinicians. Concordance between the human labels and LLM was evaluated for extraction. For treatment recommendations, agreement between the LLM’s output and physician’s documented recommendation in clinical notes was assessed, with disagreements reviewed independently by two blinded genitourinary oncologists. Results: The dataset included 85 patients, median (range) age of 65 (34-84) years; 24.7% were females. Patients who declined adjuvant treatment for personal reasons were excluded. LLM achieved an extraction accuracy of 95% for presenting symptoms, 97% for BMI and ECOG, and > 99% for pathology variables. Concordance between LLM and physician treatment recommendations was 84.7% (72/85). Among 13 discrepant cases, one oncologist agreed with the LLM in 9 cases and the other in 8. The main reasons for disagreement between the physicians and the LLM were that the LLM favored active surveillance for patients with declining renal function, whereas physicians still considered adjuvant pembrolizumab appropriate in such cases. Additionally, the LLM demonstrated hesitancy to recommend pembrolizumab for patients with low performance status. Overall, the 13 discrepant cases were nuanced and challenging, with disagreement observed between the two oncologists themselves in three instances. Conclusions: LLMs demonstrated high accuracy in extracting clinically relevant variables and generating objective, evidence-based adjuvant treatment recommendations for RCC after nephrectomy. Importantly, LLM did not generate any inappropriate or potentially harmful recommendations. Our pipeline can serve as a supportive decision tool to enhance consistency in post-nephrectomy management and assist physicians in choosing between active surveillance and adjuvant pembrolizumab. However, final treatment decisions should remain the responsibility of the treating physician after comprehensive patient evaluation.
Clinical efficacy of belzutifan in pre-treated renal cell carcinoma: A real world retrospective cohort benchmarked to LITESPARK-005.
464 Background: Based on LITESPARK-005 trail, Belzutifan was FDA-approved to treat advanced RCC following ICI and a VEGF-TKI. We conducted a retrospective cohort study to report the real-world outcomes of Belzutifan in pre-treated RCC patients. Methods: A retrospective chart review of all patients who received Belzutifan at the Mayo Clinic Comprehensive Cancer Center between Dec 2023 and Sep 2025 was conducted. Patients treated for sporadic RCC were eligible; those with von Hippel–Lindau disease, non-RCC pathologies (e.g., Pheochromocytoma, ovarian cancer) were excluded. Radiologic response was assessed by trained curators using RECIST-defined criteria, approximated through systematic review of radiology reports with clinician adjudication when needed. Progression-free survival (PFS), defined as the time from treatment initiation to radiographic progression or death, was estimated using the Kaplan–Meier method. Non-progressors were censored at the last radiology assessment. Patients who discontinued therapy for non-progression reasons were censored at the last radiology assessment prior to discontinuation. Any-cause hypoxia and anemia were reported using CTCAEv5 definitions. Results: A total of 158 patients were identified; 83 (52.5%) who received Belzutifan for sporadic RCC were included. The remaining were excluded for VHL disease (68, 43%) or other pathologies (7, 4.4%). Median follow up was 12 months, 67% were male, median age was 70 (range 39, 94) with 57 patients (69%) were ≥ 65. 28 patients (34%) had a poor IMDC score at baseline. The cohort received a median of 3 previous lines of therapy (range 1,8). Median treatment duration was 3 months (IQR: 1-9.5). Median PFS was 5.7 months (95% CI, 3.8–8.7). At 12 and 18 months, 23.1% and 13.9% of patients, respectively, remained alive and progression-free. Corresponding OS rates at these time points were 60.2% and 51.5%. A confirmed ORR occurred in 12 patients (14.4%). Hypoxia occurred in 44 (53%) patients, median onset 31 days (range 1–270) and 29 (34.9%) required hospitalizations. Median hemoglobin (Hb) levels at baseline were 12.65 g/dl (range, 7.2-15.5), and 68 (82%) patients developed Hb decline on Belzutifan, 27 (32.5%) required transfusions. Conclusions: In an older, high-risk cohort with higher number of prior lines of therapy, Belzutifan yielded PFS/OS and ORR landmarks comparable to the trial supporting its effectiveness in the real world. Outcomes compared with LITESPARK-005 trial. Variable Real world cohort (Mayo Clinic) LITESPARK-005, Belzutifan arm Median PFS (months, 95% CI) 5.7 (3.8-8.7) 5.6 (3.9-7) 12-month PFS rate (%, 95% CI) 23.1% (14.4-33.4) 33.4% (28.4-33.5) 18-month PFS rate (%, 95% CI) 13.9% (7.7-23.9) 24% (19-29.4) 12-month OS rate (%, 95% CI) 60.2% (48.9-70.8) 67.9% (62.9-72.4) 18-month OS rate (%, 95% CI) 51.5% (40.6-62.9) 55.2% (50-60.1) ORR (%, 95% CI) 14.4% (7.7-23.9) 21.9% (17.8-26.5)
A large language model-based framework for automated phenotypic characterization in myeloproliferative neoplasms
Abstract Background Accurate diagnosis and risk stratification in myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPNs) rely on expert interpretation of complex clinical records. Outside major academic centers, specialist expertise is scarce, and time-consuming chart reviews extend clinic visits and delay treatment decisions, underscoring the need for automated, point-of-care phenotyping for MPN patients. Methods Patients with the ICD codes of PV, ET and MF were identified from the electronic health record. Cases were defined as patients meeting the 2017 WHO diagnostic criteria for PV, ET or MF or those with a definitive MPN diagnosis determined by a hematologist. Controls were the patients who met neither the diagnostic criteria nor had a hematologist-assigned diagnosis. Two clinicians extracted demographic, clinical (symptoms, thrombotic history), laboratory (complete blood count, serum chemistry), genetic (mutations, karyotype), bone marrow morphology, diagnostic mentions and prognostic score information from unstructured clinical notes and pathology reports. Prognostic scores included the conventional risk model for PV, the International Prognostic Score of Thrombosis (IPSET) for ET and the Dynamic International Prognostic Scoring System (DIPSS), DIPSS-plus or Mutation-enhanced International Prognostic Scoring System (MIPSS-70) for MF. Discrepancies in data extraction were resolved by a consensus. A random sample of 510 patients (PV: 85, ET: 85, MF: 85, controls: 255) was split into prompt development (n=60) and test (n=450) sets for iterative workflow engineering and evaluation. The workflow included: (i) a rule-based algorithm for automated retrieval of demographic details, the first bone marrow biopsy report, the first clinical note after biopsy and the latest laboratory results within 90 days preceding biopsy (ii) a HIPAA-compliant LLM (GPT-4 turbo) for data extraction from the clinical notes and pathology reports (iii) a regular expressions-based algorithm for post-processing extracted data into structured tables, (iv) a clinician-informed source prioritization algorithm to select data from preferred sources, (v) a modified WHO-informed diagnostic characterization tool incorporating hematologist-assigned diagnoses to distinguish cases from controls and; (vi) an NCCN guidelines-based algorithm for prognostic tool selection and risk-stratification based on available data. Structured prompts were used to extract demographic, clinical, laboratory, genetic and pathological data in a zero-shot deterministic setting. The performance of automated data extraction, diagnostic characterization and prognostication was compared against the manually curated data. Accuracy and F1 scores were computed for data extraction and prognostication tasks while sensitivity and specificity were calculated to assess diagnostic performance. Results A total of 450 (PV: 150, ET: 150, MF: 150) pathology reports and 50 (PV: 52, ET: 55; MF: 65) clinical notes were identified for 450 test set patients. The test set data extraction accuracy was 95% (reports: 97%, notes: 92%) for PV, 93% (reports: 92%, notes: 94%) for ET and 98% (reports: 99%, notes 97%) for MF. The test set F1 score was 0.95 (reports: 0.96, notes: 0.93) for PV, 0.95 (reports: 0.95, notes: 0.96) for ET and 0.98 (reports: 0.99, notes: 0.97) for MF. PV patients were diagnosed with 100% sensitivity and 98% specificity whereas ET and MF patients were diagnosed with 100% sensitivity and specificity. The accuracy of risk stratification was 100% for PV and ET and 94% for MF. The F1 score for risk stratification was 1.00 for PV and ET and 0.94 for MF. Conclusions The first-in-class automated framework successfully identified pertinent clinical information, performed accurate data extraction from unstructured records and enabled clinician-guided source prioritization for accurate diagnosis and risk stratification of MPN patients. Prospective validation of the framework is required for widespread clinical implementation.