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Kai Zhang



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    EP1.01 - Advanced NSCLC (ID 150)

    • Event: WCLC 2019
    • Type: E-Poster Viewing in the Exhibit Hall
    • Track: Advanced NSCLC
    • Presentations: 1
    • Now Available
    • Moderators:
    • Coordinates: 9/08/2019, 08:00 - 18:00, Exhibit Hall
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      EP1.01-55 - Neoantigen Deletion Leads to Hyperprogressive Disease (HPD) in Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer (NSCLC) Treated with PD-1/PD-L1 Inhibitors (Now Available) (ID 1179)

      08:00 - 18:00  |  Author(s): Kai Zhang

      • Abstract
      • Slides

      Background

      Hyperprogressive disease (HPD) is a distinct pattern of progression described in patients with cancer treated with PD-1/PD-L1 inhibitors. The incidence of HPD is reported to be 13.8% in advanced NSCLC. Recently multiple characteristics have been recognized to predict the risk of HPD, however the mechanism underlying have not been systemically studied.

      Method

      We report a Chinese patient who developed hyperprogressive disease after 4 cycles of PD-1 blockade treatment. Clinical and demographic data was collected from electronic records. Whole exome sequencing (WES) of the primary tumor was performed to identify tumor mutation burden (TMB) and tumor neoantigen burden (TNB) following the restricted pipeline. Liquid biopsy targeting ctDNA and T cell receptor (TCR) was constructed to monitor the efficacy of immunotherapy.

      Result

      A 70-year-old male with smoking history underwent chest CT scan in February 2018 and was found to have a right upper lobe mass with intrapulmonary metastasis in different lobes and multiple lymph nodes. Resection of right lower lung by video-assisted thoracic surgery (VATS) revealed poorly differentiated, squamous cell carcinoma. In July 2018, he progressed after two cycle of chemotherapy and radiation therapy targeting newly bone metastasis of lumbar spine, then he was screened to start Nivolumab at dose of 240mg daily/2 weeks. After four cycle of Nivolumab, he obtained PD and was assigned to palliative thoracic radiation therapy. The PD-L1 expression level of our patient was 1%≤TC<5%, next generation sequencing (NGS) didn’t show alteration in genes related to HPD, such as MDM2/MDM4 or EGFR. Blood sample retrieved before and after immunotherapy revealed the increase in bTMB (from 7.70 Muts/Mb to 18.00 Muts/Mb), however TNB truly expressed as neoantigens were rather lower compared to TMB, indicating the low immunogenicity of tumor. We also found a sharp fluctuate in the detection of driver genes mutations in ctDNA (TP53,CDKN2A,ERBB3,FBXW7), and the majority of high-frequency TCR dropped significantly during immunotharapy.

      Conclusion

      It is reported that NSCLC with a high tumor mutation burden (TMB) may benefit from PD-1/PD-L1 inhibitors treatment, and TMB is considered as the surrogate of tumor neoantigen burden (TNB). However the deletion of neoantigen may occur at different level, including copy number variation at the DNA level, down-regulation of transcription level and inherited variation at the epigenetic level, resulting in the low immunogenicity of primary tumor. Deletion of neoantigen may provide a mechanism of immune evasion which leads to the resistance to PD-1/PD-L1 inhibitors. In this case, treatment of checkpoint inhibitors may activate certain signaling pathway of driver genes to support the hyperprogression disease (HPD). This case report focusing on neoantigen provides a new approach to predict the presence of hyperprogressive disease (HPD) before immunotherapy, and explains the potential mechanism of HPD.

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