ONCOmmunity

Significance of Pre-treatment Interferon-gamma Release in Patients With Non-small-cell Lung Cancer Receiving Immune Checkpoint Inhibitors.

By: Tomonori Hirashima, Tomohiro Kanai, Hidekazu Suzuki, Hiroko Yoshida, Akane Matsusita, Hiromi Kawasumi, Shingo Nasu, Ayako Tanaka, Naoko Morishita, Kunimitsu Kawahara, Yoshitaka Tamura, Norio Okamoto

Department of Thoracic Oncology, Osaka Habikino Medical Center, Osaka, Japan hirashimat@ra.opho.jp.
2020-09-26; doi: 10.21873/anticanres.14721

Abstract

Background/aim

We retrospectively investigated the significance of pre-treatment interferon-gamma release (IGR) as a biomarker for predicting the efficacy of immune checkpoint inhibitor treatment (ICI-tx).

Patients

This study included non-small-cell lung cancer patients who received ICI-tx between January 1, 2016 and April 30, 2019. IGR was measured using the positive control of an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. We defined the pre-treatment cut-off level of IGR as 10 IU/ml.

Results

Fifty-four patients were divided into two groups; those with an IGR ≤10 IU/ml (lower group: LG) (n=15) and those with >10 IU/ml (higher group: HG) (n=39). The time to treatment failure (TTF) in the HG was significantly longer than that in the LG. In multivariate analyses, C-reactive protein and IGR levels were significant risk factors for TTF.

Conclusion

Pre-treatment IGR level of >10 IU/ml is recommended to identify those patients who will respond favourably to ICI-tx.