Predicting response to immunotherapy in non-small cell lung cancer- from bench to bedside

Immune checkpoint inhibitor (ICI) therapy is first-line treatment for many advanced non-small cell lung cancer (aNSCLC) patients. Predicting response could help guide selection of intensified or alternative anti-cancer regimens. We hypothesized that radiomics and laboratory variables predictive of ICI response in a murine model would also predict response in aNSCLC patients.

Fifteen mice with lung carcinoma tumors implanted in bilateral flanks received ICI. Pre-ICI laboratory and computed tomography (CT) data were evaluated for association with systemic ICI response. Baseline clinical and CT data for 117 aNSCLC patients treated with nivolumab were correlated with overall survival (OS). Models for predicting treatment response were created and subjected to internal cross-validation, with the human model further tested on 42 aNSCLC patients who received pembrolizumab.

Models incorporating baseline NLR and identical radiomics (surface-to-mass ratio, average Gray, and 2D kurtosis) predicted ICI response in mice and OS in humans with AUCs of 0.91 and 0.75, respectively. The human model successfully sorted pembrolizumab patients by longer vs. shorter predicted OS (median 35 months vs. 6 months, p=0.026 by log-rank).

This study advances precision oncology by non-invasively classifying aNSCLC patients according to ICI response using pre-treatment data only. Interestingly, identical radiomics features and NLR correlated with outcomes in the preclinical study and with ICI response in 2 independent patient cohorts, suggesting translatability of the findings. Future directions include using a radiogenomic approach to optimize modeling of ICI response.