Resected EGFR-mutated non-small-cell lung cancers: incidence and outcomes in a European population (GFPC Exerpos Study)

Background

Few epidemiological data are available on surgically treated Caucasian patients with non-small-cell lung cancers (NSCLCs) harboring epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) mutations. The main objective of this study was to describe, in the real-world setting, these patients' incidence, clinical, and tumoral characteristics.

Methods

The participating centers included all consecutive localized non-squamous NSCLC patients undergoing surgery between January 2018 and December 2019 in France. EGFR status was determined retrospectively when not available before surgery.

Results

The study includes 1391 no squamous NSCLC patients from 16 centers; EGFR status was determined before surgery in 692 (49.7%) of the cases and conducted as part of the study for 699 (50.3%); 171 (12.3%) were EGFR mutated; median age: 70 (range: 36-88) years; female: 59.6%; never smokers: 75.7%; non-squamous histology 97.7%, programmed death ligand-1 expression 0%/1-49%/⩾50 in 60.5%/25.7%/13.8%, respectively. Surgery was predominantly lobectomy (81%) or segmentectomy (14.9%), with systematic lymph node dissection in 95.9%. Resection completeness was R0 for 97%. Post-surgery staging was as follows: IA: 52%, IB: 16%, IIA: 4%, IIB: 10%, IIIA: 16%, and IIIB: 0.05%; EGFR mutation exon was Del19/exon 21 (L858R)/20/18 in 37.4%/36.8%/14%, and 6.4% of cases, respectively; 31 (18%) patients received adjuvant treatment (chemotherapy: 93%, EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitor: 0%, radiotherapy: 20%). After a median follow-up of 31 (95% confidence interval: 29.6-33.1) months, 45 (26%) patients relapsed: 11/45 (24%) locally and 34 (76%) with metastatic progression. Median disease-free survival (DFS) and overall survival were not reached and 3-year DFS was 60%.

Conclusion

This real-world analysis provides the incidence and outcomes of resected EGFR-mutated NSCLCs in a European patient cohort.

Abstract 5618: Multi-institutional validation of a radiomics-based artificial intelligence method for predicting response to PD-1/PD-L1 immune checkpoint inhibitor (ICI) therapy in stage IV NSCLC

There is an urgent clinical need to identify patients likely to benefit from immune checkpoint inhibitor ICI treatment. Approaches available in the clinic today, such as PD-L1 immunohistochemistry (IHC) and tumor mutation burden (TMB), are insufficient for this task, in part as differences in microenvironments expressed by individual tumors may lead to heterogeneous response patterns. Recent efforts exploring the utility of quantitative imaging (radiomic) biomarkers to predict response to ICIs have shown promise to provide a more accurate and scalable method. In contrast to previously published models, our work focuses on generalizable models for predicting individual lesion-level as well as patient-level response at 3-month follow-up per RECIST criteria, using a large multi-institutional “real-world” dataset. The models combine radiomics features with demographic, molecular, and laboratory values routinely available in patients’ electronic medical records. We analyzed radiomic characteristics of 6,295 primary and metastatic lesions from 1,206 metastatic NSCLC patients treated with anti-PD-1/anti-PD-L1 ICIs from 8 institutions across the US and Europe. Patients with unavailable PD-L1 IHC, imaging follow-up, or with oncogenic driver mutations were excluded from analysis, resulting in a total dataset of 766 subjects randomly assigned to training (N=514) and validation sets (N=252). Using gradient-boosted decision tree algorithms, we developed a multi-modal predictive model to identify patients responding to ICI therapy at 3-months and evaluated its performance against an imaging-only CT radiomics model and the clinical standard of care, biopsy-based PD-L1 IHC. The multi-modal model contains CT radiomic features capturing lesion heterogeneity and spicularity, patient demographics, PD-L1 TPS, and tumor burden volume in the lung, lymph nodes, and the liver. Under the two-tailed DeLong test, the multi-modal model demonstrated statistically significant benefit over the current standard of care (PD-L1 IHC) in predicting multi-lesion 3-month response: 0.81 (P=.005) area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC-AUC) in first-line ICI monotherapy patients, 0.72 (P=.044) in all-lines ICI monotherapy, and 0.71 (P=.025) in all-lines ICI-chemotherapy combination. The imaging-only model demonstrated predictive performance comparable to PD-L1 IHC: 0.71 (P=.226), 0.61 (P=.905), 0.62 (P=.674) on the same cohorts respectively. A multi-modal CT radiomics-based approach demonstrated predictive accuracy benefit over the current clinical standard and may provide an opportunity for more personalized patient management, such as risk-based escalation/de-escalation of concurrent chemotherapy in NSCLC patients. We will evaluate this methodology in prospective studies.

Citation Format: Ravi B. Parikh, Petr Jordan, Rita J. Ciaravino, Ryan A. Beasley, Arpan A. Patel, Dwight H. Owen, Arya Amini, Brendan D. Curti, Ray Page, Aurelie Swalduz, Jean-Paul Beregi, Jan Chrusciel, Eric Snyder, Pritam Mukherjee, Heather M. Selby, Soohee Lee, Roshanthi Weerasinghe, Shwetha Pindikuri, Jakob B. Weiss, Andrew L. Wentland, Anish Kirpalani, An Liu, Olivier Gevaert, George Simon, Hugo JWL Aerts. Multi-institutional validation of a radiomics-based artificial intelligence method for predicting response to PD-1/PD-L1 immune checkpoint inhibitor (ICI) therapy in stage IV NSCLC. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2023; Part 1 (Regular and Invited Abstracts); 2023 Apr 14-19; Orlando, FL. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2023;83(7_Suppl):Abstract nr 5618.

Atezolizumab with or without bevacizumab and platinum-pemetrexed in patients with stage IIIB/IV non-squamous non-small cell lung cancer with EGFR mutation, ALK rearrangement or ROS1 fusion progressing after targeted therapies: A multicentre phase II open-label non-randomised study GFPC 06-2018

BACKGROUND

Previous reports showed limited efficacy of immune checkpoint inhibitors as single-agent treatment for non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) with epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) mutation or ALK/ROS1 fusion. We aimed at evaluating the efficacy and safety of immune checkpoint inhibitor combined with chemotherapy and bevacizumab (when eligible) in this patient subgroup.

METHODS

We conducted a French national open-label multicentre non-randomised non-comparative phase II study in patients with stage IIIB/IV NSCLC, oncogenic addiction (EGFR mutation or ALK/ROS1 fusion), with disease progression after tyrosine kinase inhibitor and no prior chemotherapy. Patients received platinum, pemetrexed, atezolizumab, bevacizumab (PPAB cohort) or, if not eligible to bevacizumab, platinum-pemetrexed-atezolizumab (PPA cohort). The primary end-point was the objective response rate (RECIST v1.1) after 12 weeks, evaluated by blind independent central review.

RESULTS

71 patients were included in PPAB cohort and 78 in PPA cohort (mean age, 60.4/66.1 years; women 69.0%/51.3%; EGFR mutation, 87.3%/89.7%; ALK rearrangement, 12.7%/5.1%; ROS1 fusion, 0%/6.4%, respectively). After 12 weeks, objective response rate was 58.2% (90% confidence interval [CI], 47.4-68.4) in PPAB cohort and 46.5% (90% CI, 36.3-56.9) in PPA cohort. Median progression-free survival and overall survival were 7.3 (95% CI 6.9-9.0) months and 17.2 (95% CI 13.7-NA) months in PPAB cohort and 7.2 (95% CI 5.7-9.2) months and 16.8 (95% CI 13.5-NA) months in PPA cohort, respectively. Grade 3-4 adverse events occurred in 69.1% of patients in PPAB cohort and 51.4% in PPA cohort; Grade 3-4 atezolizumab-related adverse events occurred in 27.9% and 15.3%, respectively.

CONCLUSION

Combination approach with atezolizumab with or without bevacizumab and platinum-pemetrexed achieved promising activity in metastatic EGFR-mutated or ALK/ROS1-rearranged NSCLC after tyrosine kinase inhibitor failure, with acceptable safety profile.

[NSCLC and new oncogenic mutations: Diagnosis and perspectives]

The development of new targeted therapies in non-small cell lung carcinoma (NSCLC) depends on a better understanding of the molecular basis of carcinogenesis, a knowledge of the role of molecular aberrations in disease progression and the development of molecular biology platforms with the capacity to identify new biomarkers. In the current article, we review the techniques routinely used in cancer molecular biology platforms as well as new techniques under development. These new NSCLC biomarkers have been made available to clinicians and biologists in parallel with the development of targeted drugs. New molecular abnormalities of EGFR exon 20, HER2, MET, RET, BRAF, ROS1 and NTRK have been identified and there have been clinical trials of the most innovative targeted drugs.

Immune checkpoint inhibitor treatment of a first cancer is associated with a decreased incidence of second primary cancer

Background

Second primary cancers (SPCs) are diagnosed in over 5% of patients after a first primary cancer (FPC). We explore here the impact of immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) given for an FPC on the risk of SPC in different age groups, cancer types and treatments.

Patients and methods

The files of the 46 829 patients diagnosed with an FPC in the Centre Léon Bérard from 2013 to 2018 were analyzed. Structured data were extracted and electronic patient records were screened using a natural language processing tool, with validation using manual screening of 2818 files of patients. Univariate and multivariate analyses of the incidence of SPC according to patient characteristics and treatment were conducted.

Results

Among the 46 829 patients, 1830 (3.9%) had a diagnosis of SPC with a median interval of 11.1 months (range 0-78 months); 18 128 (38.7%) received cytotoxic chemotherapy (CC) and 1163 (2.5%) received ICIs for the treatment of the FPC in this period. SPCs were observed in 7/1163 (0.6%) patients who had received ICIs for their FPC versus 437/16 997 (2.6%) patients receiving CC and no ICIs for the FPC versus 1386/28 669 (4.8%) for patients receiving neither CC nor ICIs for the FPC. This reduction was observed at all ages and for all histotypes analyzed. Treatment with ICIs and/or CC for the FPC are associated with a reduced risk of SPC in multivariate analysis.

Conclusion

Immunotherapy with ICIs alone and in combination with CC was found to be associated with a reduced incidence of SPC for all ages and cancer types.

•

From 2013 to 2018, 3.9% of the 46 829 patients diagnosed with a first cancer presented with an SPC.

•

Treatment of the first cancer with ICIs was associated with a major reduction of SPC.

•

CC given for an FPC was also associated with a lower magnitude of reduction of SPC.

•

There were no SPC in cancer patients treated with ICIs in the localized phase of their first cancer.

[Immunotherapy of metastatic non-small cell lung cancer from first line to resistance and its management]

Immunotherapy alone or in combination with chemotherapy is now an integral part of the treatment of metastatic NSCLC. This treatment is transforming the management of these cancers, with 20-30% of patients achieving long survival. However, disease progression under treatment is still the rule for the majority of patients, raising problems both in understanding its mechanisms and in subsequent appropriate management. This study examines current therapeutic options and proposes solutions to circumvent resistance to immunotherapy. The mechanisms of resistance to these treatments is also analysed.

Outcomes in oncogenic-addicted advanced NSCLC patients with actionable mutations identified by liquid biopsy genomic profiling using a tagged amplicon-based NGS assay

Circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA)-based molecular profiling is rapidly gaining traction in clinical practice of advanced cancer patients with multi-gene next-generation sequencing (NGS) panels. However, clinical outcomes remain poorly described and deserve further validation with personalized treatment of patients with genomic alterations detected in plasma ctDNA. Here, we describe the outcomes, disease control rate (DCR) at 3 months and progression-free survival (PFS) in oncogenic-addicted advanced NSCLC patients with actionable alterations identified in plasma by ctDNA liquid biopsy assay, InVisionFirst®-Lung. A pooled retrospective analysis was completed of 81 advanced NSCLC patients with all classes of alterations predicting response to current FDA approved drugs: sensitizing common EGFR mutations (78%, n = 63) with T790M (73%, 46/63), ALK / ROS1 gene fusions (17%, n = 14) and BRAF V600E mutations (5%, n = 4). Actionable driver alterations detected in liquid biopsy were confirmed by prior tissue genomic profiling in all patients, and all patients received personalized treatment. Of 82 patients treated with matched targeted therapies, 10% were at first-line, 41% at second-line, and 49% beyond second-line. Acquired T790M at TKI relapse was detected in 73% (46/63) of patients, and all prospective patients (34/46) initiated osimertinib treatment based on ctDNA results. The 3-month DCR was 86% in 81 evaluable patients. The median PFS was of 14.8 months (12.1–22.9m). Baseline ctDNA allelic fraction of genomic driver did not correlate with the response rate of personalized treatment (p = 0.29). ctDNA molecular profiling is an accurate and reliable tool for the detection of clinically relevant molecular alterations in advanced NSCLC patients. Clinical outcomes with targeted therapies endorse the use of liquid biopsy by amplicon-based NGS ctDNA analysis in first line and relapse testing for advanced NSCLC patients.

Abstract 4581: Feasibility of an amplicon-based liquid biopsy for ALK and ROS1 fusions in advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients

INTRODUCTION Circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) is a surrogate material for somatic mutation detection, such as EGFR, BRAF or KRAS mutations in NSCLC patients, however the applicability of this technique for ALK and ROS1 fusion detection is poorly described. The aim of this combined analysis was to evaluate an amplicon-based ctDNA technology in a cohort of ALK and ROS1 positive NSCLC patients. METHODS ALK and ROS1 positive NSCLC patients were prospectively enrolled or retrospective specimens selected, to be included across 6 international centres. ALK/ROS1 positive status was determined by standard of care (FISH/IHC or NGS). The analysis of EML4-ALK fusions (variant 1,2,3) and ROS1 fusions (with partner genes CD74, SLC34A2, SDC4 and EZR) was performed using the InVision™ platform. RESULTS Patients included (n=65; 59 ALK, 6 ROS1): 35 (55%) females, 40 (63%) non-smokers, median age of 59 years, stage IV disease (88%) adenocarcinoma (97%). All patients were ALK/ROS positive by IHC (32), FISH (45) and/or tissue NGS (10). Samples (n=98) were collected across multiple timepoints. In total, 31 patients were fusion positive (25 ALK, 6 ROS1). Among treatment-naïve patients, sensitivity was 78% for ALK and 100% for ROS1. In contrast, fusions were detected in minority of samples (7/57) in patients responding to treatment. In patients with ctDNA positive ALK fusion (n=25): 8 patients (32%) presented the EML4-ALK variant 1; 2 (8%) the variant 2 and 15 (60%) the variant 3. In the ROS1 population (n=6), rearrangement with chromosome 5, resulting in CD74-ROS1 was seen in 4 of cases and translocation with chromosome 4 to generate SLC34A2-ROS1 occurred in 2 of cases. All patients had unique DNA fusion junctions identified and will be described, providing an insight at the DNA level of the molecular mechanisms leading to ALK and ROS1 driven lung cancers. Breakpoint microhomology was observed at the fusion junction in 50% of cases, ranging from 1 to 7bp. A 4bp insertion of non-templated DNA was seen in one case, with the remaining 47% of cases most likely the result of non-homologous end joining. Evidence for enrichment of microhomologous sequences and clustering of breaks within the introns will be investigated and reported at the conference. CONCLUSION The detection of ALK and ROS1 fusions using the amplicon-based NGS Invision liquid biopsy platform is feasible in routine clinical practice. Good sensitivity for clinically actionable ALK and ROS structural rearrangements in untreated advanced NSCLC patients was demonstrated.

Citation Format: Laura Mezquita, Yuebi Hu, Karen Howarth, Cecile Jovelet, David Planchard, Ludovic Lacroix, Aurelie Swalduz, Sandra Ortiz-Cuaran, Virginie Avrillon, Vincent Plagnol, John Beeler, Katherine Baker-Neblett, Greg Jones, Nitzan Rosenfeld, Clive Morris, Emma Green, Edward S. Kim, Maurice Perol, Pierre Saintigny, Stephen V. Liu, Geoff R. Oxnard, Benjamin Besse. Feasibility of an amplicon-based liquid biopsy for ALK and ROS1 fusions in advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2018; 2018 Apr 14-18; Chicago, IL. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2018;78(13 Suppl):Abstract nr 4581.

Circulating tumor DNA profiling of lung cancer patients treated with EGFR inhibitors

e23060

Background: The presence of a targetable driver mutation in nearly 50% non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients has enabled tailoring therapy regimens to improve survival. Serial repeat biopsies can offer an instrumental indication into the longitudinal evolution of cancer. However, tissue biopsies are invasive and can provide insufficient material for molecular testing. Mutation detection in plasma DNA as a “liquid biopsy” has been suggested as non-invasive approach to monitor tumor dynamics over time. Methods: We established an institutional protocol (NCT01511288) for the collection of liquid biopsies from stage IIIB/IV NSCLC patients either untreated, under therapy or progressive on therapy with a TKI. This protocol has included 134 NSCLC patients for whom clinical, pathological and genomic information is collected prospectively. Analyses were performed by Inivata using InVision (enhanced tagged-amplicon sequencing). Results: So far, samples from 50 patients have been analyzed. InVision allowed the detection of driver mutations in 20 plasma samples obtained at diagnosis. Tissue was unavailable for molecular analysis in 8/20 samples. We observed a concordance rate in mached plasma and tissue samples, of 92,3% (n = 12). In plasma samples from patients that relapsed under erlotinib or gefitinib we evidenced the EGFR T790M mutation in 57% of patients, with a concordance rate of 90,9%. Interestingly, analysis of serial samples collected from 3 patients under EGFR-targeted therapy showed the emergence of an EGFR T790M mutation 11 weeks before the radiographic confirmation of progression (P1); differential dynamics in the allelic fractions of mutated clones that reflected the pattern of dissociated tumor response to treatment (P2) and the presence of concomitant EGFR activating and T790M mutations, together with an EGFR C797G, BRAF V600E and KRAS G12D in a patient who progressed under osimertinib (P3). Conclusions: Our preliminary results provide further evidence on the use of liquid biopsies for monitoring disease response, resistance to treatment and tumor heterogeneity. Subsequently, we will evaluate the utility of liquid biopsies in the clinical setting to understand the dynamics of mutant clones over time.