Ruan, Gordon

Abstract Advances in the treatment of Langerhans cell histiocytosis (LCH) have resulted in a growing survivor population. There is a lack of data on long-term outcomes among adults with LCH. We conducted a retrospective record review of 219 adults (aged ≥18 years) with LCH. Most common presentation was multisystem (34.2%), followed by single-system pulmonary (32%), unifocal (28.3%), and single-system multifocal (5.5%) LCH. Risk organ involvement (the liver, spleen, or bone marrow) was seen in 8.7% of cases, and 40 of 88 (45.5%) tested cases were BRAFV600E. At a median follow-up of 74 months, 5-year progression-free survival (PFS) was 58.3% and estimated median PFS was 83 months. Median overall survival (OS) was not reached; 5- and 10-year OS rates were 88.7% and 74.5%, respectively. Risk organ involvement was associated with worse PFS (hazard ratio [HR], 4.5) and OS (HR, 10.8). BRAFV600E was not associated with risk organ involvement or survival. When compared with matched unaffected US population, individuals with LCH had a significantly higher risk of overall mortality (standardized mortality ratio [SMR], 2.66), specifically among those aged <55 years at diagnosis (SMR, 5.94) and those with multisystem disease (SMR, 4.12). Second cancers occurred in 16.4% cases, including diverse hematologic and solid organ malignancies. LCH-associated deaths constituted 36.1% of deaths and occurred within 5 years of diagnosis. After 5 years, non-LCH causes of death, including second cancers, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and cardiovascular diseases, predominated. Our study highlights, to our knowledge, for the first time, that adults with LCH experience early and late mortality from non-LCH causes and the need for development of targeted survivorship programs to improve outcomes.

1552 Background: Immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy-related (ICI) pneumonitis poses a significant challenge in patients with cancer. There is a need for predictive modeling to identify those at high risk of developing serious adverse events of ICI pneumonitis. Methods: A newly created database of cancer patients diagnosed with ICI pneumonitis seen at Mayo Clinic from 2014-2022 was utilized for exploratory data analysis. Modeling was used to determine if three clinical outcomes could be predicted, namely risk of death from: pneumonitis prior to starting immunotherapy, pneumonitis at time of diagnosis of ICI pneumonitis, and any cause at time of ICI pneumonitis diagnosis. The data consisted of 170 patients with annotation for 71 clinical features. Data was divided into features available at time of cancer diagnosis and at time of ICI pneumonitis diagnosis. Exploratory modeling was performed using the gradient boosting technique Xgboost (Chen, 2015) and conducted using k-fold balanced cross validation best practices as well as a train/test/validate schema with 70%/20%/10% data proportions, respectively. Model reverse engineering was done with Shapley statistics (Lundberg, 2017) to determine which features had the largest contribution per model. Once identified, only those highly weighted features were used for logistic regression analysis providing more reproducible predictions by decreasing model variance. Results: Risk of death from pneumonitis prior to starting immunotherapy was modeled with an area under the curve of the receiver operator characteristic (AUC-ROC) of 0.79 with the most contributory features including lymphocyte count, oxygen dependence, PFT values, and PD-L1 expression. Logistic regression produced an AUC-ROC of 0.87 (95% CI 0.72-1.0, p < 0.0013). Risk of death from pneumonitis at the time of ICI pneumonitis diagnosis was modeled with an AUC-ROC of 0.85 and the most contributory features were similar to the list described in the previous endpoint. Logistic regression produced an AUC-ROC of 0.89 (95% CI 0.81-0.96, p < 0.0001). Risk of death from any cause at the time of ICI pneumonitis diagnosis until follow up concluded by 12/2022 produced a model with an AUC-ROC of 0.75 with the most contributory features including supplemental oxygen, PFT values, basic laboratory values, and PD-L1 expression, among others. Logistic regression produced an AUC-ROC of 0.85 (95% CI 0.76-0.93, p < 0.0001). Conclusions: We demonstrate that commonly available clinical data can be used to identify patients at high risk of death from ICI pneumonitis. This study identified clinical features that were predictive in each scenario from which further concerted effort could produce a new clinical model to provide clinician decision support when considering immunotherapy. Further studies should be done to further elucidate feature interdependence and generalizability.

Abstract Erdheim-Chester disease (ECD) and Rosai-Dorfman disease (RDD) are rare non-Langerhans cell histiocytoses (non-LCHs), for which therapeutic options are limited. MAPK pathway activation through BRAFV600E mutation or other genomic alterations is a histiocytosis hallmark and correlates with a favorable response to BRAF inhibitors and the MEK inhibitor cobimetinib. However, there has been no systematic evaluation of alternative MEK inhibitors. To assess the efficacy and safety of the MEK inhibitor trametinib, we retrospectively analyzed the outcomes of 26 adult patients (17 with ECD, 5 with ECD/RDD, 3 with RDD, and 1 with ECD/LCH) treated with orally administered trametinib at 4 major US care centers. The most common treatment-related toxicity was rash (27% of patients). In most patients, the disease was effectively managed at low doses (0.5-1.0 mg trametinib daily). The response rate of the 17 evaluable patients was 71% (73% [8/11] without a detectable BRAFV600E achieving response). At a median follow-up of 23 months, treatment effects were durable, with a median time-to-treatment failure of 37 months, whereas the median progression-free and overall survival were not reached (at 3 years, 90.1% of patients were alive). Most patients harbored mutations in BRAF (either classic BRAFV600E or other BRAF alterations) or alterations in other genes involved in the MAPK pathway, eg, MAP2K, NF1, GNAS, or RAS. Most patients required lower than standard doses of trametinib but were responsive to lower doses. Our data suggest that the MEK inhibitor trametinib is an effective treatment for ECD and RDD, including those without the BRAFV600E mutation.

Abstract Infection with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) can result in a cytokine storm that is associated with poor outcomes in patients. The activation of a NOD-like receptor pyrin domain containing 3 (NLRP3) inflammasome following SARS-CoV-2 infection has been shown to play a major role in inflammatory immune responses. In this study, we show that open reading frame 8 (ORF8) protein is abundantly secreted as a glycoprotein in vitro. The glycosylated ORF8 stimulates human CD14+/CD16+ monocytes to cause upregulation of proinflammatory cytokine production and cell surface marker expression within 24 hours. The data suggests that stimulation of human monocytes by ORF8 is not receptor mediated. Rather, ORF8 is likely phagocytosed by human monocytes. ORF8 then stimulates the monocytes by independently binding to the NACHT and LRR domains of the NLRP3 protein. Pharmacologic inhibition of NLRP3 significantly diminished the production of pro-inflammatory cytokines from ORF8-stimulated human monocytes. Finally, this study shows that the ORF8 protein is also secreted in patients with newly diagnosed coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Levels of ORF8 in the blood of patients diagnosed with COVID-19 correlated with disease mortality and trajectory of disease. ORF8 stimulation of monocytes causes pro-inflammatory cytokine production that leads to the development of severe COVID-19.