An immune gene signature to predict prognosis and immunotherapeutic response in lung adenocarcinoma

Integration of the bulk transcriptome and single-cell transcriptome reveals efferocytosis features in lung adenocarcinoma prognosis and immunotherapy by combining deep learning

BACKGROUND

Efferocytosis (ER) refers to the process of phagocytic clearance of programmed dead cells, and studies have shown that it is closely related to tumor immune escape.

METHODS

This study was based on a comprehensive analysis of TCGA, GEO and CTRP databases. ER-related genes were collected from previous literature, univariate Cox regression was performed and consistent clustering was performed to categorize lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD) patients into two subgroups. Lasso regression and multivariate Cox regression analyses were used to construct ER-related prognostic features, and multiple immune infiltration algorithms were used to assess the correlation between the extracellular burial-related risk score (ERGRS) and tumor microenvironment (TME). And the key gene HAVCR1 was identified by deep learning, etc. Finally, pan-cancer analysis of the key genes was performed and in vitro experiments were conducted to verify the promotional effect of HAVCR1 on LUAD progression.

RESULTS

A total of 33 ER-related genes associated with the prognosis of LUAD were identified, and the prognostic signature of ERGRS was successfully constructed to predict the overall survival (OS) and treatment response of LUAD patients. The high-risk group was highly enriched in some oncogenic pathways, while the low-ERGRS group was highly enriched in some immune-related pathways. In addition, the high ERGRS group had higher TMB, TNB and TIDE scores and lower immune scores. The low-risk group had better immunotherapeutic response and less likelihood of immune escape. Drug sensitivity analysis revealed that BRD-K92856060, monensin and hexaminolevulinate may be potential therapeutic agents for the high-risk group. And ERGRS was validated in several cohorts. In addition, HAVCR1 is one of the key genes, and knockdown of HAVCR1 in vitro significantly reduced the proliferation, migration and invasion ability of lung adenocarcinoma cells.

CONCLUSION

Our study developed a novel prognostic signature of efferocytosis-related genes. This prognostic signature accurately predicted survival prognosis as well as treatment outcome in LUAD patients and explored the role of HAVCR1 in lung adenocarcinoma progression.

Analysis and identification of mRNAsi‑related expression signatures via RNA sequencing in lung cancer

High stemness index scores are associated with poor survival in patients with lung cancer. Studies on the mRNA expression-based stemness index (mRNAsi) are typically conducted using tumor tissues; however, mRNAsi-related expression signatures based on cell-free RNA (cfRNA) are yet to be comprehensively investigated. The present study aimed to elucidate the gene expression profiles of tumor stemness in lung cancer tissues and corresponding cfRNAs in blood, and to assess their links with immune infiltration. Tumor tissue, paracancerous tissue, peripheral blood and lymph node samples were collected from patients with stage I-III non-small cell lung cancer and RNA sequencing was performed. The TCGAbiolinks package was used to calculate the mRNAsi for each of these four types of sample. Weighted gene co-expression network analysis and differentially expressed gene analyses were performed to investigate mRNAsi-related genes, and pathway enrichment analysis was performed using the Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) orthology-based annotation system. In addition, the STAR-Fusion tool was used to detect fusion variants, and CIBERSORT was used to analyze the correlations of stemness signatures in tissues and blood with immune cell infiltration. The mRNAsi values in peripheral blood and lymph nodes were found to be higher than those in cancer tissues. 'Hematopoietic cell lineage' was the only KEGG pathway enriched in mRNAsi-related genes in both lung cancer tissues and peripheral blood. In addition, the protein tyrosine phosphatase receptor type C associated protein gene was the only gene commonly associated with the mRNAsi in these two types of sample. The expression of mRNAsi-related genes was increased in the dendritic and Treg cells in tumor tissues, but was elevated in Treg and CD8 cells in the blood. In conclusion, cfRNAs in the blood exhibit unique stemness signatures that have potential for use in the diagnosis of lung cancer.

DNA-PK inhibition enhances neoantigen diversity and increases T cell responses to immunoresistant tumors

Effective antitumor T cell activity relies on the expression and MHC presentation of tumor neoantigens. Tumor cells can evade T cell detection by silencing the transcription of antigens or by altering MHC machinery, resulting in inadequate neoantigen-specific T cell activation. We identified the DNA-protein kinase inhibitor (DNA-PKi) NU7441 as a promising immunomodulator that reduced immunosuppressive proteins, while increasing MHC-I expression in a panel of human melanoma cell lines. In tumor-bearing mice, combination therapy using NU7441 and the immune adjuvants stimulator of IFN genes (STING) ligand and the CD40 agonist NU-SL40 substantially increased and diversified the neoantigen landscape, antigen-presenting machinery, and, consequently, substantially increased both the number and repertoire of neoantigen-reactive, tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs). DNA-PK inhibition or KO promoted transcription and protein expression of various neoantigens in human and mouse melanomas and induced sensitivity to immune checkpoint blockade (ICB) in resistant tumors. In patients, protein kinase, DNA-activated catalytic subunit (PRKDC) transcript levels were inversely correlated with MHC-I expression and CD8+ TILs but positively correlated with increased neoantigen loads and improved responses to ICB. These studies suggest that inhibition of DNA-PK activity can restore tumor immunogenicity by increasing neoantigen expression and presentation and broadening the neoantigen-reactive T cell population.

Prognostic model of lung adenocarcinoma based on immunoprognosis-related genes and related drug prediction

Background

Lung cancer (LC) is the most common malignant tumor in the world, and lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD) is the most common type of LC. Immune microenvironment plays a critical role in cancer from onset to relapse. We aimed to identify an effective immune-related prediction model for assessing prognosis and predicting the relevant tumor therapeutic drugs.

Methods

According to the RNA sequencing data of LUAD transcriptome in The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database and the immune-related genes obtained from IMMPORT (The Immunology Database and Analysis Portal) database, immune prognosis-related genes were screened. Weighted gene co-expression network analysis (WGCNA) identified hub genes in differentially expressed immune-related genes (DEIRGs). Least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) Cox and ten rounds of cross-validation were used to screen core genes to establish a prognostic model, and in situ hybridization was used to verify the expression of core genes in LUAD. Then the patients from the TCGA database were divided into high-risk group and low-risk group. The survival, tumor microenvironment (TME) and immune cell infiltration of different groups were further analyzed, and the differential genes between the two groups were analyzed by gene ontology (GO), Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) and Gene Set Enrichment Analysis (GSEA) enrichment analyses. Finally, the small molecular drugs that can inhibit the prognosis of LUAD were screened by Connectivity Map (CMAP), and the therapeutic mechanism of small molecular drug oxibendazole was verified by Cell Counting Kit-8 (CCK-8) experiment.

Results

A four-immunoprognosis-related gene model was established to forecast the overall survival (OS) of LUAD through LASSO Cox regression and ten rounds of cross-validation analysis. This prognostic model stratified LUAD patients into low-risk and high-risk groups. According to the findings of the survival analysis, the low-risk group had a greater OS than the high-risk group and the content of immune cells in LUAD was corrected with the survival prognosis of patients. Univariate and multivariate Cox regression also revealed that the prognostic model was an independent prognosis factor in LUAD. Five kinds of small molecular drugs which can inhibit the prognosis of LUAD were screened by CMAP. As shown by CCK-8 test, the small molecular drug "oxibendazole" can effectively inhibit the proliferation of LUAD cells.

Conclusions

Based on immune-related prognostic genes, a new prognostic model for LUAD was constructed. Oxibendazole can inhibit the proliferation of LUAD cells, which provides a new idea for the treatment of LUAD.

Granulocytes and mast cells in AllergoOncology-Bridging allergy to cancer: An EAACI position paper

Derived from the myeloid lineage, granulocytes, including basophils, eosinophils, and neutrophils, along with mast cells, play important, often disparate, roles across the allergic disease spectrum. While these cells and their mediators are commonly associated with allergic inflammation, they also exhibit several functions either promoting or restricting tumor growth. In this Position Paper we discuss common granulocyte and mast cell features relating to immunomodulatory functions in allergy and in cancer. We highlight key mechanisms which may inform cancer treatment and propose pertinent areas for future research. We suggest areas where understanding the communication between granulocytes, mast cells, and the tumor microenvironment, will be crucial for identifying immune mechanisms that may be harnessed to counteract tumor development. For example, a comprehensive understanding of allergic and immune factors driving distinct neutrophil states and those mechanisms that link mast cells with immunotherapy resistance, might enable targeted manipulation of specific subpopulations, leading to precision immunotherapy in cancer. We recommend specific areas of investigation in AllergoOncology and knowledge exchange across disease contexts to uncover pertinent reciprocal functions in allergy and cancer and allow therapeutic manipulation of these powerful cell populations. These will help address the unmet needs in stratifying and managing patients with allergic diseases and cancer.

High-throughput transcriptome profiling indicates ribosomal RNAs to be associated with resistance to immunotherapy in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC)

BACKGROUND

Despite the impressive outcomes with immune checkpoint inhibitor (ICI) in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), only a minority of the patients show long-term benefits from ICI. In this study, we used retrospective cohorts of ICI treated patients with NSCLC to discover and validate spatially resolved protein markers associated with resistance to programmed cell death protein-1 (PD-1) axis inhibition.

METHODS

Pretreatment samples from 56 patients with NSCLC treated with ICI were collected and analyzed in a tissue microarray (TMA) format in including four different tumor regions per patient using the GeoMx platform for spatially informed transcriptomics. 34 patients had assessable tissue with tumor compartment in all 4 TMA spots, 22 with leukocyte compartment and 12 with CD68 compartment. The patients' tissue that was not assessable in fourfold redundancy in each compartment was designated as the validation cohort; cytokeratin (CK) (N=22), leukocytes CD45 (N=31), macrophages, CD68 (N=43). The human whole transcriptome, represented by~18,000 individual genes assessed by oligonucleotide-tagged in situ hybridization, was sequenced on the NovaSeq platform to quantify the RNAs present in each region of interest.

RESULTS

54,000 gene variables were generated per case, from them 25,740 were analyzed after removing targets with expression lower than a prespecified frequency. Cox proportional-hazards model analysis was performed for overall and progression-free survival (OS, PFS, respectively). After identifying genes significantly associated with limited survival benefit (HR>1)/progression per spot per patient, we used the intersection of them across the four TMA spots per patient. This resulted in a list of 12 genes in the tumor-cell compartment (RPL13A, GNL3, FAM83A, CYBA, ACSL4, SLC25A6, EPAS1, RPL5, APOL1, HSPD1, RPS4Y1, ADI1). RPL13A, GNL3 in tumor-cell compartment were also significantly associated with OS and PFS, respectively, in the validation cohort (CK: HR, 2.48; p=0.02 and HR, 5.33; p=0.04). In CD45 compartment, secreted frizzled-related protein 2, was associated with OS in the discovery cohort but not in the validation cohort. Similarly, in the CD68 compartment ARHGAP and PNN interacting serine and arginine rich protein were significantly associated with PFS and OS, respectively, in the majority but not all four spots per patient.

CONCLUSION

This work highlights RPL13A and GNL3 as potential indicative biomarkers of resistance to PD-1 axis blockade that might help to improve precision immunotherapy strategies for lung cancer.

Generalizable transcriptome-based tumor malignant level evaluation and molecular subtyping towards precision oncology

In cancer treatment, therapeutic strategies that integrate tumor-specific characteristics (i.e., precision oncology) are widely implemented to provide clinical benefits for cancer patients. Here, through in-depth integration of tumor transcriptome and patients' prognoses across cancers, we investigated dysregulated and prognosis-associated genes and catalogued such important genes in a cancer type-dependent manner. Utilizing the expression matrices of these genes, we built models to quantitatively evaluate the malignant levels of tumors across cancers, which could add value to the clinical staging system for improved prediction of patients' survival. Furthermore, we performed a transcriptome-based molecular subtyping on hepatocellular carcinoma, which revealed three subtypes with significantly diversified clinical outcomes, mutation landscapes, immune microenvironment, and dysregulated pathways. As tumor transcriptome was commonly profiled in clinical practice with low experimental complexity and cost, this work proposed easy-to-perform approaches for practical clinical promotion towards better healthcare and precision oncology of cancer patients.

Machine-learning developed an iron, copper, and sulfur-metabolism associated signature predicts lung adenocarcinoma prognosis and therapy response

BACKGROUND

Previous studies have largely neglected the role of sulfur metabolism in LUAD, and no study has combine iron, copper, and sulfur-metabolism associated genes together to create prognostic signatures.

METHODS

This study encompasses 1564 LUAD patients, 1249 NSCLC patients, and over 10,000 patients with various cancer types from diverse cohorts. We employed the R package ConsensusClusterPlus to separate patients into different ICSM (Iron, Copper, and Sulfur-Metabolism) subtypes. Various machine-learning methods were utilized to develop the ICSMI. Enrichment analyses were conducted using ClusterProfiler and GSVA, while IOBR quantified immune cell infiltration. GISTIC2.0 and maftools were utilized for CNV and SNV data analysis. The Oncopredict package predicted drug information based on GDSC1. TIDE algorithm and cohorts GSE91061 and IMvigor210 evaluated patient response to immunotherapy. Single-cell data was processed using the Seurat package, AUCell package calculated cells geneset activity scores, and the Scissor algorithm identified ICSMI-associated cells. In vitro experiments was conducted to explore the role of ICSMRGs in LUAD.

RESULTS

Unsupervised clustering identified two distinct ICSM subtypes of LUAD, each with unique clinical characteristics. The ICSMI, comprising 10 genes, was constructed using integrated machine-learning methods. Its prognostic power was validated in 10 independent datasets, revealing that LUAD patients with higher ICSMI levels had poorer prognoses. Furthermore, ICSMI demonstrated superior predictive abilities compared to 102 previously published signatures. A nomogram incorporating ICSMI and clinical features exhibited high predictive performance. ICSMI positively correlated with patients gene mutations, and integrated analysis of bulk and single-cell transcriptome data revealed its association with TME modulators. Cells representing the high-ICSMI phenotype exhibited more malignant features. LUAD patients with high ICSMI levels exhibited sensitivity to chemotherapy and targeted therapy but displayed resistance to immunotherapy. In a comprehensive analysis across various cancers, ICSMI retained significant prognostic value and emerged as a risk factor for the majority of cancer patients.

CONCLUSIONS

ICSMI provides critical prognostic insights for LUAD patients, offering valuable insights into the tumor microenvironment and predicting treatment responsiveness.

Identification of a novel ADCC-related gene signature for predicting the prognosis and therapy response in lung adenocarcinoma

BACKGROUND

Previous studies have largely neglected the role of ADCC in LUAD, and no study has systematically compiled ADCC-associated genes to create prognostic signatures.

METHODS

In this study, 1564 LUAD patients, 2057 NSCLC patients, and more than 5000 patients with various cancer types from diverse cohorts were included. R package ConsensusClusterPlus was utilized to classify patients into different subtypes. A number of machine-learning algorithms were used to construct the ADCCRS. GSVA and ClusterProfiler were used for enrichment analyses, and IOBR was used to quantify immune cell infiltration level. GISTIC2.0 and maftools were used to analyze the CNV and SNV data. The Oncopredict package was used to predict drug information based on the GDSC1. Three immunotherapy cohorts were used to evaluate patient response to immunotherapy. The Seurat package was used to process single-cell data, the AUCell package was used to calculate cells' geneset activity scores, and the Scissor algorithm was used to identify ADCCRS-associated cells.

RESULTS

Through unsupervised clustering, two distinct subtypes of LUAD were identified, each exhibiting distinct clinical characteristics. The ADCCRS, consisted of 16 genes, was constructed by integrated machine-learning methods. The prognostic power of ADCCRS was validated in 28 independent datasets. Further, ADCCRS shows better predictive abilities than 102 previously published signatures in predicting LUAD patients' survival. A nomogram incorporating ADCCRS and clinical features was constructed, demonstrating high predictive performance. ADCCRS positively correlates with patients' gene mutation, and integrated analysis of bulk and single-cell transcriptome data revealed the association of ADCCRS with TME modulators. Cells representing high-ADCCRS phenotype exhibited more malignant features. LUAD patients with high ADCCRS levels exhibited sensitivity to chemotherapy and targeted therapy, while displaying resistance to immunotherapy. In pan-cancer analysis, ADCCRS still exhibited significant prognostic value and was found to be a risk factor for most cancer patients.

CONCLUSIONS

ADCCRS offers a critical prognostic insight for patients with LUAD, shedding light on the tumor microenvironment and forecasting treatment responsiveness.

The prognosis, chemotherapy and immunotherapy efficacy of the SUMOylation pathway signature and the role of UBA2 in lung adenocarcinoma

Lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD) is one of the most common malignant tumors worldwide. Small Ubiquitin-like Modifier (SUMO)-ylation plays a crucial role in tumorigenesis. However, the SUMOylation pathway landscape and its clinical implications in LUAD remain unclear. Here, we analyzed genes involved in the SUMOylation pathway in LUAD and constructed a SUMOylation pathway signature (SUMOPS) using the LASSO-Cox regression model, validated in independent cohorts. Our analysis revealed significant dysregulation of SUMOylation-related genes in LUAD, comprising of favorable or unfavorable prognostic factors. The SUMOPS model was associated with established molecular and histological subtypes of LUAD, highlighting its clinical relevance. The SUMOPS stratified LUAD patients into SUMOPS-high and SUMOPS-low subtypes with distinct survival outcomes and adjuvant chemotherapy responses. The SUMOPS-low subtype showed favorable responses to adjuvant chemotherapy. The correlations between SUMOPS scores and immune cell infiltration suggested that patients with the SUMOPS-high subtype exhibited favorable immune profiles for immune checkpoint inhibitor (ICI) treatment. Additionally, we identified UBA2 as a key SUMOylation-related gene with an increased expression and a poor prognosis in LUAD. Cell function experiment confirmed the role of UBA2 in promoting LUAD cell proliferation, invasion, and migration. These findings provide valuable insights into the SUMOylation pathway and its prognostic implications in LUAD, paving the way for personalized treatment strategies and the development of novel therapeutic targets.

Association of a gene-expression subtype to outcome and treatment response in patients with recurrent/metastatic head and neck squamous cell carcinoma treated with nivolumab

BACKGROUND

Immune checkpoint inhibitors have been approved and currently used in the clinical management of recurrent and metastatic head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (R/M HNSCC) patients. The reported benefit in clinical trials is variable and heterogeneous. Our study aims at exploring and comparing the predictive role of gene-expression signatures with classical biomarkers for immunotherapy-treated R/M HNSCC patients in a multicentric phase IIIb trial.

METHODS

Clinical data were prospectively collected in Nivactor tiral (single-arm, open-label, multicenter, phase IIIb clinical trial in platinum-refractory HNSCC treated with nivolumab). Findings were validated in an external independent cohort of immune-treated HNSCC patients, divided in long-term and short-term survivors (overall survival >18 and <6 months since the start of immunotherapy, respectively). Pretreatment tumor tissue specimen from immunotherapy-treated R/M HNSCC patients was used for PD-L1 (Tumor Proportion Score; Combined Positive Score (CPS)) and Tumor Mutational Burden (Oncopanel TSO500) evaluation and gene expression profiling; classical biomarkers and immune signatures (retrieved from literature) were challenged in the NIVACTOR dataset.

RESULTS

Cluster-6 (Cl6) stratification of NIVACTOR cases in high score (n=16, 20%) and low score (n=64, 80%) demonstrated a statistically significant and clinically meaningful improvement in overall survival in the high-score cases (p=0.00028; HR=4.34, 95% CI 1.84 to 10.22) and discriminative ability reached area under the curve (AUC)=0.785 (95% CI 0.603 to 0.967). The association of high-score Cl6 with better outcome was also confirmed in: (1) NIVACTOR progression-free survival (p=4.93E-05; HR=3.71, 95% CI 1.92 to 7.18) and objective-response-rate (AUC=0.785; 95% CI 0.603 to 0.967); (2) long survivors versus short survivors (p=0.00544). In multivariate Cox regression analysis, Cl6 was independent from Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group performance status, PDL1-CPS, and primary tumor site.

CONCLUSIONS

These data highlight the presence of underlying biological differences able to predict survival and response following treatment with immunotherapy in platinum-refractory R/M HNSCC that could have translational implications improving treatment selection.

TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER

EudraCT Number: 2017-000562-30.

Biomarkers for immune checkpoint inhibition in sarcomas - are we close to clinical implementation?

Sarcomas are a group of diverse and complex cancers of mesenchymal origin that remains poorly understood. Recent developments in cancer immunotherapy have demonstrated a potential for better outcomes with immune checkpoint inhibition in some sarcomas compared to conventional chemotherapy. Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) are key agents in cancer immunotherapy, demonstrating improved outcomes in many tumor types. However, most patients with sarcoma do not benefit from treatment, highlighting the need for identification and development of predictive biomarkers for response to ICIs. In this review, we first discuss United States (US) Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved and European Medicines Agency (EMA)-approved biomarkers, as well as the limitations of their use in sarcomas. We then review eight potential predictive biomarkers and rationalize their utility in sarcomas. These include gene expression signatures (GES), circulating neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR), indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase (IDO), lymphocyte activation gene 3 (LAG-3), T cell immunoglobin and mucin domain-containing protein 3 (TIM-3), TP53 mutation status, B cells, and tertiary lymphoid structures (TLS). Finally, we discuss the potential for TLS as both a predictive and prognostic biomarker for ICI response in sarcomas to be implemented in the clinic.

Immune gene signatures as prognostic criteria for cancer patients

Recently, the possibility of using immune gene signatures (IGSs) has been considered as a novel prognostic tool for numerous cancer types. State-of-the-art methods of genomic, transcriptomic, and protein analysis have allowed the identification of a number of immune signatures correlated to disease outcome. The major adaptive and innate immune components are the T lymphocytes and macrophages, respectively. Herein, we collected essential data on IGSs consisting of subsets of T cells and tumor-associated macrophages and indicating cancer patient outcomes. We discuss factors that can introduce errors in the recognition of immune cell types and explain why the significance of immune signatures can be interpreted with uncertainty. The unidirectional functions of cell types should be entirely addressed in the signatures constructed by the combination of innate and adaptive immune cells. The state of the antitumor immune response is the key basis for IGSs and should be considered in gene signature construction. We also analyzed immune signatures for the prediction of immunotherapy response. Finally, we attempted to explain the present-day limitations in the use of immune signatures as robust criteria for prognosis.

Pharmacogenomics: Driving Personalized Medicine

Personalized medicine tailors therapies, disease prevention, and health maintenance to the individual, with pharmacogenomics serving as a key tool to improve outcomes and prevent adverse effects. Advances in genomics have transformed pharmacogenetics, traditionally focused on single gene-drug pairs, into pharmacogenomics, encompassing all "-omics" fields (e.g., proteomics, transcriptomics, metabolomics, and metagenomics). This review summarizes basic genomics principles relevant to translation into therapies, assessing pharmacogenomics' central role in converging diverse elements of personalized medicine. We discuss genetic variations in pharmacogenes (drug-metabolizing enzymes, drug transporters, and receptors), their clinical relevance as biomarkers, and the legacy of decades of research in pharmacogenetics. All types of therapies, including proteins, nucleic acids, viruses, cells, genes, and irradiation, can benefit from genomics, expanding the role of pharmacogenomics across medicine. Food and Drug Administration approvals of personalized therapeutics involving biomarkers increase rapidly, demonstrating the growing impact of pharmacogenomics. A beacon for all therapeutic approaches, molecularly targeted cancer therapies highlight trends in drug discovery and clinical applications. To account for human complexity, multicomponent biomarker panels encompassing genetic, personal, and environmental factors can guide diagnosis and therapies, increasingly involving artificial intelligence to cope with extreme data complexities. However, clinical application encounters substantial hurdles, such as unknown validity across ethnic groups, underlying bias in health care, and real-world validation. This review address the underlying science and technologies germane to pharmacogenomics and personalized medicine, integrated with economic, ethical, and regulatory issues, providing insights into the current status and future direction of health care. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT: Personalized medicine aims to optimize health care for the individual patients with use of predictive biomarkers to improve outcomes and prevent adverse effects. Pharmacogenomics drives biomarker discovery and guides the development of targeted therapeutics. This review addresses basic principles and current trends in pharmacogenomics, with large-scale data repositories accelerating medical advances. The impact of pharmacogenomics is discussed, along with hurdles impeding broad clinical implementation, in the context of clinical care, ethics, economics, and regulatory affairs.

Generating immunogenomic data-guided virtual patients using a QSP model to predict response of advanced NSCLC to PD-L1 inhibition

Generating realistic virtual patients from a limited amount of patient data is one of the major challenges for quantitative systems pharmacology modeling in immuno-oncology. Quantitative systems pharmacology (QSP) is a mathematical modeling methodology that integrates mechanistic knowledge of biological systems to investigate dynamics in a whole system during disease progression and drug treatment. In the present analysis, we parameterized our previously published QSP model of the cancer-immunity cycle to non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and generated a virtual patient cohort to predict clinical response to PD-L1 inhibition in NSCLC. The virtual patient generation was guided by immunogenomic data from iAtlas portal and population pharmacokinetic data of durvalumab, a PD-L1 inhibitor. With virtual patients generated following the immunogenomic data distribution, our model predicted a response rate of 18.6% (95% bootstrap confidence interval: 13.3-24.2%) and identified CD8/Treg ratio as a potential predictive biomarker in addition to PD-L1 expression and tumor mutational burden. We demonstrated that omics data served as a reliable resource for virtual patient generation techniques in immuno-oncology using QSP models.

Identification of lung adenocarcinoma subtypes and predictive signature for prognosis, immune features, and immunotherapy based on immune checkpoint genes

Background: Lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD) is the most common variant of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) across the world. Recently, the rapid development of immunotherapy has brought a new dawn for LUAD patients. Closely related to the tumor immune microenvironment and immune cell functions, more and more new immune checkpoints have been discovered, and various cancer treatment studies targeting these novel immune checkpoints are currently in full swing. However, studies on the phenotype and clinical significance of novel immune checkpoints in LUAD are still limited, and only a minority of patients with LUAD can benefit from immunotherapy. Methods: The LUAD datasets were downloaded from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) databases, and the immune checkpoints score of each sample were calculated based on the expression of the 82 immune checkpoints-related genes (ICGs). The weighted gene co-expression network analysis (WGCNA) was used to obtain the gene modules closely related to the score and two different LUAD clusters were identified based on these module genes by the Non-negative Matrix Factorization (NMF) Algorithm. The differentially expressed genes between the two clusters were further used to construct a predictive signature for prognosis, immune features, and the response to immunotherapy for LUAD patients through a series of regression analyses. Results: A new immune checkpoints-related signature was finally established according to the expression of 7 genes (FCER2, CD200R1, RHOV, TNNT2, WT1, AHSG, and KRTAP5-8). This signature can stratify patients into high-risk and low-risk groups with different survival outcomes and sensitivity to immunotherapy, and the signature has been well validated in different clinical subgroups and validation cohorts. Conclusion: We constructed a novel immune checkpoints-related LUAD risk assessment system, which has a good predictive ability and significance for guiding immunotherapy. We believe that these findings will not only aid in the clinical management of LUAD patients but also provide some insights into screening appropriate patients for immunotherapy.

Generating immunogenomic data-guided virtual patients using a QSP model to predict response of advanced NSCLC to PD-L1 inhibition

Generating realistic virtual patients from a limited amount of patient data is one of the major challenges for quantitative systems pharmacology modeling in immuno-oncology. Quantitative systems pharmacology (QSP) is a mathematical modeling methodology that integrates mechanistic knowledge of biological systems to investigate dynamics in a whole system during disease progression and drug treatment. In the present analysis, we parameterized our previously published QSP model of the cancer-immunity cycle to non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and generated a virtual patient cohort to predict clinical response to PD-L1 inhibition in NSCLC. The virtual patient generation was guided by immunogenomic data from iAtlas portal and population pharmacokinetic data of durvalumab, a PD-L1 inhibitor. With virtual patients generated following the immunogenomic data distribution, our model predicted a response rate of 18.6% (95% bootstrap confidence interval: 13.3-24.2%) and identified CD8/Treg ratio as a potential predictive biomarker in addition to PD-L1 expression and tumor mutational burden. We demonstrated that omics data served as a reliable resource for virtual patient generation techniques in immuno-oncology using QSP models.