Pathomics Signature for Prognosis and Chemotherapy Benefits in Stage III Colon Cancer

The current TNM staging system may not provide adequate information for prognostic purposes and to assess the potential benefits of chemotherapy for patients with stage III colon cancer.

To develop and validate a pathomics signature to estimate prognosis and benefit from chemotherapy using hematoxylin-eosin (H-E)-stained slides.

This retrospective prognostic study used data from consecutive patients with histologically confirmed stage III colon cancer at 2 medical centers between January 2012 and December 2015. A total of 114 pathomics features were extracted from digital H-E-stained images from Nanfang Hospital of Southern Medical University, Guangzhou, China, and a pathomics signature was constructed using a least absolute shrinkage and selection operator Cox regression model in the training cohort. The associations of the pathomics signature with disease-free survival (DFS) and overall survival (OS) were evaluated. Patients at the Sixth Affiliated Hospital, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China, formed the validation cohort. Data analysis was conducted from September 2022 to March 2023.

The prognostic accuracy of the pathomics signature as well as its association with chemotherapy response were evaluated.

This study included 785 patients (mean [SD] age, 62.7 [11.1] years; 437 [55.7%] male). A pathomics signature was constructed based on 4 features. Multivariable analysis revealed that the pathomics signature was an independent factor associated with DFS (hazard ratio [HR], 2.46 [95% CI, 2.89-4.13]; P < .001) and OS (HR, 2.78 [95% CI, 2.34-3.31]; P < .001) in the training cohort. Incorporating the pathomics signature into pathomics nomograms resulted in better performance for the estimation of prognosis than the traditional model in a concordance index comparison in the training cohort (DFS: HR, 0.88 [95% CI, 0.86-0.89] vs HR, 0.73 [95% CI, 0.71-0.75]; P < .001; OS: HR, 0.85 [95% CI, 0.84-0.86] vs HR, 0.74 [95% CI, 0.72-0.76]; P < .001) and validation cohort (DFS: HR, 0.83 [95% CI, 0.82-0.85] vs HR, 0.70 [95% CI, 0.67-0.72]; P < .001; OS: HR, 0.80 [95% CI, 0.78-0.82] vs HR, 0.69 [0.67-0.72]; P < .001). Further analysis revealed that patients with a low pathomics signature were more likely to benefit from chemotherapy (eg, combined cohort: DFS: HR, 0.44 [95% CI, 0.28-0.69]; P = .001; OS: HR, 0.43 [95% CI, 0.29-0.64]; P < .001).

These findings suggest that a pathomics signature could help identify patients most likely to benefit from chemotherapy in stage III colon cancer.