Abstract PR005: Leveraging mass cytometry for phenotyping CTCs in SCLC liquid biopsies: Tracking therapy resistance at a personalized level
Authors: Loukia G Karacosta, Sayantan Bhattacharyya, Allison Stewart, Ashley Victorian, Ester F Lujan, Shafqat Ehsan, Subin Kim, Alberto Duarte, Runsheng Wang, Benedict Anchang, Jing Wang, Lauren Byers
Journal: Clinical Cancer Research (2024)

Abstract Liquid biopsies present a promising, minimally invasive procedure through which clinicians can assess and monitor disease status by interrogating circulating tumor cell (CTC) and immune cell phenotypes. In the case of Small-cell lung cancer (SCLC) – a type of lung cancer characterized by aggressive growth, dismal prognosis and limited treatment options - leveraging liquid biopsies and CTCs for evaluating disease status would be of great benefit, given that biopsies are scarce. Furthermore, SCLC CTC numbers are higher compared to other cancers, presenting a unique opportunity to utilize them for assessing SCLC therapy resistance and identifying new targetable markers. In this study, we leverage mass cytometry (i.e. CyTOF) to phenotype SCLC CTC phenotypes in longitudinal clinical specimens to assess therapy resistance at a personalized level. By using CyTOF - a multiplex cytometric approach that enables interrogation of 30-50 protein markers per single cell – we show that we are able to identify and analyze a significant number of CTCs and their heterogeneous expression profiles. To achieve this, we first optimized a CyTOF panel of ∼25-30 antibodies by using SCLC cell lines and blood specimens from healthy donors and SCLC patients. We show that by using this approach, we are able to identify and phenotype SCLC CTCs by using the combination of CD45 (negative expression) and CD56 positive expression with further validation achieved by TTF1 and SCLC subtype transcription factor expression (NEUROD1, POU2F3 and ASCL1). This approach avoids enriching for specific CTC epithelial phenotypes that express surface markers that fluctuate during epithelial- mesenchymal transition (EMT) (e.g. EpCAM, a common marker for isolating CTCs). For parallel immune profiling we assessed among others CD8/CD4 (T cells) and CD11b/HLA-DR (Myeloid-derived suppressor cells, MDSCs) expression. We then proceeded to interrogate CTC phenotypic differences in the naïve vs relapsed setting as well as dynamic changes in longitudinal blood specimens from SCLC patients by evaluating markers that describe immune suppression activity (PD-L1) and EMT status (E-Cadherin, Vimentin, MUC1, Twist and Slug). Importantly, we show that with our approach we can track in real time therapeutic targets that are currently being tested in clinical trials or have been recently FDA approved (e.g. pYAP and DLL3) and found that MUC1 and pYAP are significantly increased in CTCs detected in blood specimens of SCLC relapsed patients. Our immune profiling showed an increase of MDSC percentages and a decrease in the CD4/CD8 T cell ratio in the relapsed setting. Finally, when we used PHENOSTAMP, a previously developed reference EMT map for assessing EMT phenotypes in lung cancer clinical specimens, we observed an increase of EMT heterogeneity in CTCs in relapsed patients. Our study highlights the translational power of our approach in utilizing CyTOF for longitudinally tracking CTCs directly in SCLC patient liquid biopsies towards assessing therapy response and resistance at a personalized level. Citation Format: Loukia G Karacosta, Sayantan Bhattacharyya, Allison Stewart, Ashley Victorian, Ester F Lujan, Shafqat Ehsan, Subin Kim, Alberto Duarte, Runsheng Wang, Benedict Anchang, Jing Wang, Lauren Byers. Leveraging mass cytometry for phenotyping CTCs in SCLC liquid biopsies: Tracking therapy resistance at a personalized level [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the AACR Special Conference: Liquid Biopsy: From Discovery to Clinical Implementation; 2024 Nov 13-16; San Diego, CA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Clin Cancer Res 2024;30(21_Suppl):Abstract nr PR005.