PD-L1 Testing, Treatment Patterns, and Clinical Outcomes Among Patients with Metastatic NSCLC at an Academic Medical...

Targeted therapies and immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) have revolutionized the management of metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) over the past decade.

This single-center observational study was conducted to describe programmed death-ligand 1 (PD-L1) testing, choice of therapy, and outcomes for adult patients with stage IV NSCLC initiating first-line therapy from 2017 through 2020, with follow-up through June 2021. Patient characteristics and study assessments were described according to four histomolecular subtypes, defined by histologic characteristics and availability of standard-of-care therapies for molecular subgroups at the time of study conduct.

Of 507 eligible patients with metastatic NSCLC, 85 (17%) had squamous NSCLC; 288 (57%) had nonsquamous NSCLC with no actionable genomic alteration; 44 (9%) had nonsquamous NSCLC with KRAS G12C mutation; and 90 (18%) had nonsquamous NSCLC with ROS1, BRAF V600E, EGFR exon 20 insertion, or RET or NTRK genomic alteration. Most tumors were PD-L1 tested. After excluding 40 patients whose PD-L1 testing status was unknown, all but 55 tumors (12%) were tested for PD-L1 expression, and the percentages tested rose from 86% in 2017 to 100% in 2020. From 27% of nonsquamous NSCLC with no actionable genomic alteration to 46% of KRAS G12C-mutated NSCLC had PD-L1 expression ≥ 50%. Use of chemotherapy decreased and use of ICI-chemotherapy combinations increased from 2017 to 2020. In the squamous NSCLC group, single or combination chemotherapy was administered most commonly (42%), whereas ICI-chemotherapy combinations were the most common first-line regimens in the three nonsquamous NSCLC histomolecular groups. For patients with NSCLC and no actionable genomic alterations, ICI-chemotherapy combinations were the most common regimens in 2018-2020 in all but the PD-L1 ≥ 50% category, for whom ICI monotherapy was most common every year except 2020. Median overall survival was 25.0 months (95% CI, 19.1-28.3) for all patients, and, by histomolecular cohort, 14.3 months for squamous NSCLC, 25.3 months for nonsquamous NSCLC with no actionable genomic alteration, not reached for KRAS G12C-mutated NSCLC, and 27.7 months for nonsquamous NSCLC with other genomic alterations.

Study findings highlight the increased use of PD-L1 testing over the years from 2017 to 2020 and recent changes in therapy, with decreased use of chemotherapy and increased use of ICI-chemotherapy combinations during the study in each histomolecular group. Moreover, we observed improvements in survival for patients with metastatic NSCLC relative to historical real-world data.