Abstract 5176: TIGIT expression increases with advancing clinical stages and does not differ across racial groups in resected pancreatic cancer
Authors: George Madison , Clark Julie , Gartrelle Kendyll , Nassif Georges , Hartway Kailee , Long Daniel , Salas-Escabillas Daniel , Wombwell Allison , Pichardo Thais , Wen Hui-Ju , Benitz Simone , Zwernik Samuel , Shah Rupen , Park Hakmin , Philip  , Khan Gazala , Crawford Howard , Kwon David , Theisen Brian , Steele Nina 
Published: March 2024

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) has a dismal 12% 5-year survival rate (SEER) due to a lack of early detection biomarkers and resistance to standard therapeutic options (surgery, chemotherapy, radiation). Black African Americans (BAA) have 20% increased incidence of PDAC compared to those with European Ancestry (EA). TIGIT, an immune checkpoint receptor, is a marker of T cell exhaustion and plays a key role in the inhibition of anti-tumor immune responses. Recent studies have demonstrated that immune checkpoint receptor expression (PD-1 and TIGIT) on specific T cell populations correlates to worse overall survival (OS). TIGIT inhibitors are being explored in clinical trials in pancreatic cancer due to implications of its ligand (CD155) promoting immune evasion. We hypothesize that targeted anti-TIGIT therapy, in conjunction with other therapies targeting the tumor microenvironment, could reverse the immune suppression that is characteristic of PDAC. We performed RNAscope in situ hybridization (ISH) with a probe specific for human TIGIT mRNA (combined with a nuclear counterstain) on 79 tissue samples. The cohort of tissue samples included 8 biopsies (endoscopic-guided fine needle biopsies at time of diagnosis), 66 primary (from surgical resection), and 5 metastatic (liver core biopsies from patients with a primary PDAC diagnosis) formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded (FFPE) tissue sections from patients with histologically confirmed PDAC. After cells were segmented based on nuclear recognition, the presence of TIGIT probe within the cytoplasm of each cell was determined and quantified. Percent positive cell values were then exported for statistical analysis in R. De-identified clinical metadata was obtained from REDCap, a cloud-based HIPAA-compliant database used to compile patient data for research purposes. We tested for associations between %TIGIT present and clinical covariates, using linear regression for continuous outcomes, and logistic regression for binary outcomes. ScRNAseq revealed that TIGIT mRNA is enriched in, but not exclusive to the T/NK cellular compartments in PDAC. Staining analysis showed that TIGIT expression did not differ significantly between racial groups (comparing BAA to non-BAA). The mean percentage of TIGIT positive cells was 64.0%. High expression of TIGIT was associated with clinical stage, where an increase in stage was associated with increasing %TIGIT (p &lt; 0.05).The TIGIT biomarker assay can be conducted at time of diagnosis, time of surgical resection, and time of metastatic biopsy. If patients’ samples contain high levels of TIGIT expression, these patients may be candidates for anti-TIGIT drug therapy. Considering that TIGIT expression correlates with advancing clinical stage, patients with more advanced staging at diagnosis (stage IIB, III, IV) especially may benefit from anti-TIGIT therapy.

Citation Format: Madison George, Julie Clark, Kendyll Gartrelle, Georges Nassif, Kailee Hartway, Daniel Long, Daniel Salas-Escabillas, Allison Wombwell, Thais Pichardo, Hui-Ju Wen, Simone Benitz, Samuel Zwernik, Rupen Shah, Hakmin Park, Philip, Gazala Khan, Howard Crawford, David Kwon, Brian Theisen, Nina Steele. TIGIT expression increases with advancing clinical stages and does not differ across racial groups in resected pancreatic cancer [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2024; Part 1 (Regular Abstracts); 2024 Apr 5-10; San Diego, CA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2024;84(6_Suppl):Abstract nr 5176.