Clinical outcomes of immune checkpoint inhibitor treatment in patients with classic cold tumors identified to have a high tumor mutational burden via ctDNA.
Authors: Barnett Reagan , Lanka Sree M , Clemens Keelia M. , Kiedrowski Lesli Ann , Babiker Hani M. , Bryce Alan Haruo , Meyer Haley M. , Choi Yujin , Garje Rohan , Gao Xin , Chang Richard Y. , Jang Albert , Gulhati Pat , Bilen Mehmet Asim , Barata Pedro C. 
Published: June 2023

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Background: Some cancers, including breast, ovarian, pancreatic, and prostate cancers, are traditionally considered “cold” tumors, less likely to trigger an immune response and/or respond to immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs). However, some patients with these cancer types may benefit from ICIs. Here we investigate if a high blood tumor mutational burden (bTMB-H) may predict benefit to ICIs in such tumor types. Methods: We retrospectively queried the Guardant Health database for patients with advanced breast (n = 8531), ovarian (n = 1106), upper GI/pancreatic (n = 5110), and prostate (n = 7153) cancer who had ctDNA next-generation sequencing (Guardant360, Redwood City, CA) as part of routine clinical care from 2020-2022. Mutation profiles were evaluated for patients with bTMB-H (based on previously reported 80th percentiles for each tumor type, breast ≥15.31mut/Mb, ovarian ≥14.98mut/Mb, pancreatic ≥11.36mut/Mb, prostate ≥13.4mut/Mb) vs those with bTMB below this threshold (bTMB-L). A subset of cases were analyzed in a multi-institutional clinical cohort with a bTMB of ≥10mut/Mb (n = 35). Results: bTMB-H was observed in 9.5% of patients with breast cancer, 5.1% ovarian, 2.0% pancreatic, and 4.4% prostate. Genes more often mutated in patients with pTMB-H vs pTMB-L in each cancer type included TP53 and PIK3CA in breast cancer; TP53 and CHEK2 in ovarian; ATM and CHEK2 in pancreatic; TP53 and AR in prostate (all p values < 0.01). Patients in the clinical cohort (n = 35) had a median age of 74 (range: 40-85) 29/35 White / 4/35 Black, 27 prostate, 1 breast, 3 upper GI. Patients underwent first ctDNA analysis after a median of 3 (range 0-11) lines of therapy. The median bTMB detected was 16.59 mut/Mb (range: 10.02-152.85); six patients (6/35) were MSI-H. Twenty-three patients received ICI after a median of 6 (range: 0-8) lines of therapy, either alone (9, 39%) or in combination with hormonal therapy (5, 22%), chemotherapy (3, 13%) or targeted therapy (6, 26%). The median time to progression on ICI was 5.0 (95% CI, 3.6-6.4) months and median duration of response was 19.8 months (12.1-20.2). The ORR for evaluable patients was 13% and 74% of patients had progressed on therapy at time of data cut-off. Conclusions: "Cold” tumors represent a meaningful portion of patients with advanced cancer in which ICIs are not typically leveraged, and ctDNA was a feasible tool for identifying patients with bTMB-H who achieved durable responses from ICI-based therapy. The efficacy in this clinical cohort of traditionally “cold” tumors approaches other pan-cancer cohorts that include more traditionally immunoresponsive tumor types; further research is warranted to explore predictive value of bTMB, including potential tumor-specific thresholds, for optimizing patient selection for ICIs.