Abstract 3886: Analysis of clonal heterogeneity within paired primary and metastatic tumor samples of patients with solid tumors and implications for neoantigen-based personalized cancer vaccines
Authors: Obermayer Alyssa , Shaw Timothy , Chang Darwin , Davis Joshua , Teer Jamie K. , Yu Xiaoqing , Wang Xuefeng , Hedges Dale , Tan Aik Choon , Rounbehler Robert , Naqash Abdul Rafeh , Gatti-Mays Margaret , Ratan Aakrosh , McCarter Martin , Colman Howard , Puzanov Igor , Arnold Susanne , Churchman Michelle , Hwu Patrick , Dalton William , Weiner George , Conejo-Garcia Jose , Rodriguez Paulo C. , Salhia Bodour , Tarhini Ahmad A. 
Published: March 2024

Background: Neoantigen-based personalized cancer vaccines carry significant promise in treating solid malignancies. However, there are uncertainties regarding the choice between the primary or the metastatic tumor for neoantigen prediction in individual patients. Here, we conducted a thorough examination of somatic variations in 676 patients who had paired primary and metastatic solid tumors.

Methods: Patients were enrolled in the Total Cancer Care protocol (NCT03977402) to which patients provided an IRB-approved written informed consent within the Oncology Research Information Exchange Network (ORIEN). Whole-exome sequencing of 756 primary and metastatic tumor pairs was performed (N = 676 patients). These included Genitourinary (n=83), Gynecological (n=97), Gastrointestinal (n=213), Thoracic (n=33), Cutaneous (n=24), Breast (n=108), Endometrial (n=49), Sarcoma (n=35), Head-and-Neck (n=106) and others (n=8). The data was analyzed through the ORIEN AVATAR Molecular Analysis Pipeline for somatic mutation variant detection and variant annotation. In this analysis, we focused on somatic events that result in an in-frame alteration (such as missense, in-frame deletion and in-frame insertion) and out-of-frame protein-altering mutations (such as frameshifts, de novo start, out-of-frame, and nonstop gain). Clonal population structure was determined based on pyclone-vi.

Results: For in-frame events, bladder cancer, melanoma, and gynecological cancers shared close to 75% of the mutations between paired primary and metastatic cases. In contrast, sarcoma and thyroid cancer had a low overlap (~ 25%) of variants. For out-of-frame events, these events tend to have a lower proportion of shared somatic variants between primary and metastasis than in-frame variants. Oncogenic drivers (e.g., BRAF V600E, KRAS G12A, and TP53 loss-of-function) were highly likely to be present in both paired primary and metastatic tumors. Next, we performed additional analysis on evolutionary selection of protein-coding variants via dN/dS calculation. We found no significant global shift in dN/dS ratio between paired primary and metastatic tumors across malignancies. However, we found increased selection of protein-coding variants in brain and liver metastatic sites, which correlated with increased homologous recombination deficiency within these sites.

Conclusions: Our analysis demonstrates genetic variations that exist when comparing paired primary and metastatic tumors that appear to vary by histology. Variants are potentially undergoing negative selection supported by the preferential loss of out-of-frame events in metastatic tumors and positive selection in specific metastatic sites. Overall, understanding the clonal structure will be key to neoantigen prediction for effective neoantigen-based vaccines.

Citation Format: Alyssa Obermayer, Timothy Shaw, Darwin Chang, Joshua Davis, Jamie K. Teer, Xiaoqing Yu, Xuefeng Wang, Dale Hedges, Aik Choon Tan, Robert Rounbehler, Abdul Rafeh Naqash, Margaret Gatti-Mays, Aakrosh Ratan, Martin McCarter, Howard Colman, Igor Puzanov, Susanne Arnold, Michelle Churchman, Patrick Hwu, William Dalton, George Weiner, Jose Conejo-Garcia, Paulo C. Rodriguez, Bodour Salhia, Ahmad A. Tarhini. Analysis of clonal heterogeneity within paired primary and metastatic tumor samples of patients with solid tumors and implications for neoantigen-based personalized cancer vaccines [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 3886.