Prognostic and predictive role of circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) in stage III colon cancer treated with celecoxib: Findings from CALGB (Alliance)/SWOG 80702.
Authors: Jonathan Andrew Nowak, Qian Shi, Tyler Twombly, Levi D. Pederson, Chao Ma, Juha P. Väyrynen, Melissa M. Zhao, Yasutoshi Takashima, Ardaman Shergill, Pankaj Kumar, Felix Couture, J. Phillip Kuebler, Smitha S. Krishnamurthi, Benjamin R. Tan, Eileen M. O'Reilly, Anthony F. Shields, Shuji Ogino, Alexey Aleshin, Jeffrey A. Meyerhardt
Journal: Journal of Clinical Oncology (2025)

LBA14 Background: CALGB/SWOG 80702 previously showed that the addition of celecoxib to standard adjuvant chemotherapy with FOLFOX did not significantly improve disease-free survival (DFS) in patients with stage III colon cancer. Here, we evaluated the prognostic and predictive value of ctDNA in identifying a subpopulation of patients who may benefit from celecoxib. Methods: In the subset of patients with adequate biospecimens who participated in CALGB/SWOG 80702, a randomized phase III trial of 3 versus 6 months of adjuvant 5-FU, leucovorin, oxaliplatin (FOLFOX) +/- celecoxib, ctDNA assessment was performed using a clinically validated, tumor-informed 16-plex mPCR-NGS assay (Signatera(TM), Natera, Inc.) after surgery and before the start of adjuvant therapy (baseline). The Kaplan-Meier method was used to describe the distribution of survival time based on ctDNA positivity and log-rank testing was performed. Cox proportional hazards models were used to examine unadjusted associations between ctDNA positivity and disease-free (DFS) and overall survival (OS). Two-sided P values equal to or less than 0.05 were considered statistically significant, except for interaction P values (tested with a likelihood ratio). Results: In total, 1,011 of the 2,526 patients who participated in 80702 had ctDNA testing results from baseline; 189 were ctDNA positive (18.7%). ctDNA positivity associated with male sex, higher T stage, and N2 (versus N1) stage. ctDNA positivity was significantly associated with worse DFS (hazard ratio [HR] 6.52 [95% confident interval (CI) 5.09-8.34; p&lt;0.0001] and OS (HR 6.28 [95% CI 4.63-8.51; p&lt;0.0001]). Three-year DFS was 86.6% in ctDNA-negative cases and 36.8% in ctDNA-positive cases. Among patients who were ctDNA negative, celecoxib use was not significantly associated with worse DFS as compared to placebo (HR 0.75 [95% CI 0.54-1.05; p=0.095]) with a three-year DFS of 87.7% versus 85.5%, respectively. Among ctDNA-positive patients, celecoxib significantly improved DFS compared to placebo (HR 0.59 [95% CI 0.42-0.85; p=0.004]) with a three-year DFS of 44.1% versus 26.6% (P interaction = 0.25). Similar results were seen for overall survival with a hazard ratio of 0.86 (95% CI 0.56-1.33; p=0.49) for ctDNA negative cases and 0.63 (95% CI 0.41-0.96; p=0.028) for ctDNA-positive cases for celecoxib versus placebo (P interaction = 0.28). Conclusion: In a randomized phase III adjuvant therapy trial for stage III colon cancer, ctDNA was highly prognostic of DFS and OS. ctDNA positivity also appeared predictive of the benefit of adjuvant celecoxib for DFS and OS. These results suggest a potential role for ctDNA in determining which patients should consider celecoxib in addition to standard FOLFOX adjuvant therapy. Clinical trial information: NCT01150045 .