LRP1b Loss Predicts Sensitivity to Immunotherapy in Patients with NSCLC: An Analysis of the Phase III CheckMate-026...

Low-density lipoprotein receptor-related protein 1b (LRP1b) is a cell surface receptor, commonly altered in many cancers and associated with improved responses, progression-free survival (PFS), and overall survival with immune checkpoint inhibition.

LRP1b alterations were determined by whole-exome sequencing and associated with PFS and objective response rates in patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) in a post hoc analysis of the randomized controlled phase III CheckMate-026 (CM026) trial (NCT02041533) examining chemotherapy compared with nivolumab, adjusting for tumor mutational burden (TMB) and clinical features. We separately evaluated a deidentified nationwide (US-based) NSCLC clinico-genomic database for associations of LRP1b alterations and PFS with anti-PD-1 immunotherapy.

In the clinico-genomic database cohort of patients with NSCLC (N = 18,369), LRP1b mutations were positively associated with TP53/KRAS alterations and inversely with EGFR/RET/MET/ERBB2 alterations and significantly improved PFS with PD-1 inhibition (n = 1,569; adjusted HR, 0.86; P = 0.014). In CheckMate-026, patients with LRP1b alterations had a statistically significant improvement in objective response rate to nivolumab versus LRP1b wild-type patients (OR 3.5; 95% confidence interval, 1.71-7.13; P = 0.0006) but not with chemotherapy (OR 0.63; 95% confidence interval, 0.32-1.26; P = 0.19), adjusting for TMB, age, gender, histology, smoking, and performance status. LRP1b mutations were associated with improved PFS with nivolumab (HR, 0.66; P = 0.04) but not chemotherapy (HR, 1.26; P = 0.25), also maintained in multivariate and TMB-adjusted analyses.

LRP1b mutations are a candidate predictive biomarker for immune checkpoint inhibition versus chemotherapy in NSCLC. Further mechanistic characterization of LRP1b and prospective validation are warranted and might enable future clinical use.