A deep learning approach utilizing clinical and molecular data for identifying prognostic biomarkers in patients treated with immune checkpoint inhibitors: An ORIEN pan-cancer study.

Authors

null

Payman Ghasemi Saghand

H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute, Tampa, FL

Payman Ghasemi Saghand , Issam El Naqa , Aik Choon Tan , Mengyu Xie , Donghai Dai , James Lin Chen , Aakrosh Ratan , Martin McCarter , John D. Carpten , Harsh Shah , Alexandra Ikeguchi , Abhishek Tripathi , Igor Puzanov , Susanne M. Arnold , Michelle L. Churchman , Patrick Hwu , Jose Conejo-Garcia , William S. Dalton , George J. Weiner , Ahmad A. Tarhini

Organizations

H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute, Tampa, FL, Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, University of Colorado Comprehensive Cancer Center, Aurora, CO, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, University of Utah, Huntsman Cancer Institute, Salt Lake City, UT, University of Oklahoma, Oklahoma City, OK, Stephenson Cancer Center, University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, Oklahoma City, OK, Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center, Buffalo, NY, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, M2Gen, Tampa, FL, H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center and Research Institute, Tampa, FL, University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, Holden Comprehensive Cancer Center, Iowa City, IA, Department of Cutaneous Oncology, H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute, Tampa, FL

Research Funding

Other

Background: Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) have made significant improvements in the treatment of cancer patients (pts), but many continue to experience primary or secondary resistance. Here, we leveraged clinical and genomic data to identify prognostic biomarkers in pts treated with ICIs utilizing a pan-cancer approach. Methods: Pts were enrolled to the Total Cancer Care protocol across 18 cancer centers within the Oncology Research Information Exchange Network (ORIEN). RNA-seq was performed on tumors following the RSEM pipeline and gene expressions were quantified as Transcript Per Million (TPM) and were logarithmically normalized. An Auto-Encoder Survival Deep Network (AE-SDN) architecture was developed that combined the reconstruction loss of AE with Cox regression for modeling time to event. For comparison, immunoscore for each pt was calculated based on the estimated densities of tumor CD3+ and CD8+ T cells (Galon, 2020) utilizing CIBERSORTx. The quality of overall survival (OS) predictions was assessed using Harrell’s concordance index (C-index). Log-rank test was used to assess stratified group differences (by ICI or cancer histology) along with Kaplan-Meier (KM) survival analysis of AE-SDN and immunoscore. Results: Pts (n=522) with 4 cancer types including melanoma (n=125), renal cell carcinoma (n=149), non-small cell lung cancer (n=128) and head and neck cancer (n=120) treated with 6 ICI regimens were included in this analysis. ICI regimens were nivolumab (n=219), pembrolizumab (n=202), ipilimumab+nivolumab (n=69), ipilimumab (n=30), avelumab (n=1) and cemiplimab (n=1). The Table summarizes the overall C-index and associated 95% CIs and log-rank P values for the entire cohort (regardless of histology) resulting from our proposed AE-SDN model and the separate estimated immunoscore categorization. AE-SDN top selected genes were mostly related to immunity, carcinogenesis and tumor suppression. The corresponding KM plots showed significantly wider separations of the survival curves in favor of our proposed AE-SDN model relative to the immunoscore with more than 20% improvement in prediction power. Conclusions: Deep network machine learning analysis is a promising approach to identifying relevant prognostic biomarkers in cancer pts treated with ICI. This may lead to novel therapeutic predictive signatures and identification of mechanisms of ICI resistance. Our AE-SDN gene expression signature was significantly prognostic and outperformed the estimated CD3+, CD8+ T Cell immunoscore. Further refinements to our prediction power are ongoing along with more advanced neural network architectures to elucidate related functional pathways.


Avg. C-index
95% CI
Log-rank test p-value
AE Deep
0.6556
(0.6484, 0.6629)
2.80E-14
Immuno-score
0.5402
(0.5345, 0.5459)
8.20E-04

Disclaimer

This material on this page is ©2024 American Society of Clinical Oncology, all rights reserved. Licensing available upon request. For more information, please contact licensing@asco.org

Abstract Details

Meeting

2022 ASCO Annual Meeting

Session Type

Poster Session

Session Title

Developmental Therapeutics—Immunotherapy

Track

Developmental Therapeutics—Immunotherapy

Sub Track

Tissue-Based Biomarkers

Citation

J Clin Oncol 40, 2022 (suppl 16; abstr 2619)

DOI

10.1200/JCO.2022.40.16_suppl.2619

Abstract #

2619

Poster Bd #

274

Abstract Disclosures