Lessons Learned From Lung Cancer Genomics: The Emerging Concept of Individualized Diagnostics and Treatment

2013 ◽  
Vol 31 (15) ◽  
pp. 1858-1865 ◽  
Author(s):  
Reinhard Buettner ◽  
Jürgen Wolf ◽  
Roman K. Thomas

The advent of novel therapeutics that specifically target signaling pathways activated by genetic alterations has revolutionized the way patients with lung cancer are treated. Although only few and largely ineffective chemotherapeutic regimens were available 10 years ago, a lung tumor diagnosed today requires extensive pathologic subtyping and diagnosis of genome alterations to afford more effective treatment (eg, in EGFR-mutant adenocarcinoma). This change of paradigm has several profound implications, ranging from preclinical work on the mechanism of action to a novel, more biologically oriented taxonomy and from genome diagnostics to trial design. Here, we have summarized these developments into six conceptual paradigms that illustrate the transition from empirical cancer medicine to mechanistically based individualized oncology.

2013 ◽  
Vol 31 (31) ◽  
pp. 3987-3996 ◽  
Author(s):  
Justin F. Gainor ◽  
Alice T. Shaw

The success of tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) in select patients with non–small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) has transformed management of the disease, placing new emphasis on understanding the molecular characteristics of tumor specimens. It is now recognized that genetic alterations in the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) and anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK) define two unique subtypes of NSCLC that are highly responsive to genotype-directed TKIs. Despite this initial sensitivity, however, the long-term effectiveness of such therapies is universally limited by the development of resistance. Identifying the mechanisms underlying this resistance is an area of intense, ongoing investigation. In this review, we provide an overview of recent experience in the field, focusing on results from preclinical resistance models and studies of patient-derived, TKI-resistant tumor specimens. Although diverse TKI resistance mechanisms have been identified within EGFR-mutant and ALK-positive patients, we highlight common principles of resistance shared between these groups. These include the development of secondary mutations in the kinase target, gene amplification of the primary oncogene, and upregulation of bypass signaling tracts. In EGFR-mutant and ALK-positive patients alike, acquired resistance may also be a dynamic and multifactorial process that may necessitate the use of treatment combinations. We believe that insights into the mechanisms of TKI resistance in patients with EGFR mutations or ALK rearrangements may inform the development of novel treatment strategies in NSCLC, which may also be generalizable to other kinase-driven malignancies.


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yijia Guo ◽  
Jun Song ◽  
Yanru Wang ◽  
Letian Huang ◽  
Li Sun ◽  
...  

Epidermal growth factor receptor tyrosine kinase inhibitors (EGFR-TKIs) greatly improve the survival and quality of life of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients with EGFR mutations. However, many patients exhibit de novo or primary/early resistance. In addition, patients who initially respond to EGFR-TKIs exhibit marked diversity in clinical outcomes. With the development of comprehensive genomic profiling, various mutations and concurrent (i.e., coexisting) genetic alterations have been discovered. Many studies have revealed that concurrent genetic alterations play an important role in the response and resistance of EGFR-mutant NSCLC to EGFR-TKIs. To optimize clinical outcomes, a better understanding of specific concurrent gene alterations and their impact on EGFR-TKI treatment efficacy is necessary. Further exploration of other biomarkers that can predict EGFR-TKI efficacy will help clinicians identify patients who may not respond to TKIs and allow them to choose appropriate treatment strategies. Here, we review the literature on specific gene alterations that coexist with EGFR mutations, including common alterations (intra-EGFR [on target] co-mutation, TP53, PIK3CA, and PTEN) and driver gene alterations (ALK, KRAS, ROS1, and MET). We also summarize data for other biomarkers (e.g., PD-L1 expression and BIM polymorphisms) associated with EGFR-TKI efficacy.


2019 ◽  
Vol 37 (15_suppl) ◽  
pp. e20574-e20574
Author(s):  
Yasin Mamatjan ◽  
Michael Cabanero ◽  
Jessica Weiss ◽  
Jeffrey Zuccato ◽  
Hadas Sorotsky ◽  
...  

e20574 Background: EGFR-mutant lung cancer is a key molecular subtype of lung cancer. In recent years there is clear recognition in the value of using methylation signature of cancer for improving diagnosis and predicting outcome as well as understanding the biology of cancer progression. Methods: In this study we chose to characterize the methylome signature of early stage surgically resected EGFR-mutant lung adenocarcinomas in the primary lung tumor. 90 NSCLC cases and 7 matched metastatic brain samples were profiled using Illumina Infinium MethylationEPIC Beadchip. We compared methylation profiles of 1) smokers versus lifetime non-smokers and 2) matched primary lung versus brain metastasis to identify methylation biomarkers. We performed supervised analysis and unsupervised clustering of the methylation data. Results: Unsupervised clustering of all lung and brain samples based on 10K most variable probes showed a similar methylation signature between metastatic brain samples and lung samples. The 7-matched brain and lung samples formed close cluster groups based on matching pairs for the most variable probes from 2.5K to 10K, reflecting the same cell of origin. Supervised analysis of smokers versus lifetime non-smokers did not show any significant methylation differences between the two groups, while unsupervised analysis did not create clusters of smokers and non-smokers based on various number of probe sets we analyzed. Conclusions: Lung tumors that metastasized to the brain share similar methylation features with primary lung tumors. Comprehensive methylation profiling demonstrated no difference between EGFR mutant tumors in smokers versus non-smokers, suggesting that the EGFR mutation is a stronger determinant of outcome independent of smoking.


2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (19) ◽  
pp. 4794 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lee ◽  
Kim ◽  
Sung ◽  
Lee ◽  
Han ◽  
...  

Programmed cell death ligand 1 (PD-L1) expression is an important biomarker for predicting response to immunotherapy in clinical practice. Hence, identification and characterization of factors that predict high expression of PD-L1 in patients is critical. Various studies have reported the association of PD-L1 expression with driver genetic status in non-small cell cancer; however, the results have been conflicting and inconclusive. We analyzed the relationship between PD-L1 expression and clinicopathological factors including driver genetic alterations in 1000 resected lung cancers using a clinically validated PD-L1 immunohistochemical assay. PD-L1 expression was significantly higher in squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) compared to adenocarcinomas. PD-L1 expression in adenocarcinoma was associated with higher N-stage, solid histologic pattern, EGFR wild type, and ALK positive, but no significant association with the clinicopathological factors in SCC. EGFR mutant adenocarcinomas with distinctive clinicopathologic features, especially solid histologic pattern and higher stage showed higher PD-L1 expression. To the best of our knowledge, this study is the largest to evaluate the association between PD-L1 expression and clinicopathological and molecular features in lung cancer with a highly prevalent EGFR mutation. Therefore, our results are useful to guide the selection of lung cancer, even EGFR-mutated adenocarcinoma patients with PD-L1 expression, for further immunotherapy.


2019 ◽  
Vol 37 (15_suppl) ◽  
pp. e20730-e20730
Author(s):  
Jia-Tao Cheng ◽  
Jinji Yang ◽  
Yilong Wu

e20730 Background: MET second-site mutations were previously reported in a few cases of MET-amplified or exon 14-mutant advanced non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) treated with MET inhibitors. However, both the frequency of MET second-site mutations and clinical outcome of patients with such genetic alterations have not been investigated, particularly in EGFR-mutant, MET-amplified advanced NSCLC treated with combinatorial targeted therapy. Methods: Retrospectively, from November 2016 to January 2019, 22 patients with EGFR-mutant, MET-amplified advanced NSCLC had sufficient tumor samples after resistance to a combinatorial therapy with both EGFR and MET inhibitors. All tissue samples were detected using Next-generation sequencing (NGS). The progression-free survival (PFS) was calculated the start of subsequent treatment to progressive disease or death from any cause. The overall survival (OS) was calculated from the start of subsequent treatment to death from any cause. Last follow-up was on January 31, 2019. Results: Five kinds of MET second-site mutations were found in 7 patients: D1246N D1228N, D1228H, D1231Y and Y1230H. The frequency of MET second-site mutations was 31.8% (7/22). The median PFS and OS were 3.7 (95%CI: 1.13-6.3) months and 6.9 (95%CI: 0.2-13.7) months respectively. The ORR of EGFR TKIs plus cabozantinib for suchsecond-site mutaant patients was 50% (2/4). However, the ORR of other treatments was 0% (0/3), Two of them received single agent cabozantinib, and PFS was 0.7 and 1.7 months respectively. One had a PFS of 2.5 months with pemetrexed/carboplatin plus bevacizumab. Conclusions: MET second-site mutation might be one of the commonly-seen molecular mechanisms of acquired resistance to combinatorial targeted therapy in EGFR-mutant, MET-amplified advanced NSCLC. Patients with such mutations could respond to cabozantinib plus EGFR TKI. Further more investigations are warranted to improve the efficacy.


Medicines ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 38 ◽  
Author(s):  
Iwao Shimomura ◽  
Yusuke Yamamoto ◽  
Takahiro Ochiya

Cancer is a genetic disease, and this concept is now widely exploited by both scientists and clinicians to develop new genotype-selective anticancer therapeutics. Although the quest of cancer genomics is in its dawn, recognition of the widespread applicability of genetic interactions with biological processes of tumorigenesis is propelling research throughout academic fields. Lung cancer is the most common cause of cancer death worldwide, with an estimated 1.6 million deaths each year. Despite the development of targeted therapies that inhibit oncogenic mutations of lung cancer cases, continued research into new therapeutic approaches is required for untreatable lung cancer patients, and the development of therapeutic modalities has proven elusive. The “synthetic lethal” approach holds the promise of delivering a therapeutic regimen that preferentially targets malignant cells while sparing normal cells. We highlight the potential challenges in synthetic lethal anticancer therapeutics that target untreatable genetic alterations in lung cancer. We also discuss both challenges and opportunities regarding the application of new synthetic lethal interactions in lung cancer.


2020 ◽  
Vol 38 (15_suppl) ◽  
pp. 9526-9526
Author(s):  
Wei Wu ◽  
Ross A. Okimoto ◽  
Collin Michael Blakely ◽  
James Fraser ◽  
Trever G. Bivona

9526 Background: Lung cancer remains the leading cause of death from cancer around the world. Several oncogenic drivers have been identified from large cancer genome projects focused mainly on profiling early-stage lung cancers. Targeted therapies have been developed for specific activated driver gene mutations and are used in advanced-stage patients. For instance, advanced EGFR mutant lung cancer is primarily treated with EGFR tyrosine receptor inhibitors (TKIs). However, resistance remains an obstacle to durable anti-tumor control. We hypothesize that concurrent genetic alterations co-exiting with EGFR driver mutations contribute to the failure of EGFR TKI therapy. Methods: To understand the complexity and diversity of genetic alterations present in EGFR mutant advanced lung cancers, we utilized 660 EGFR mutant advanced lung adenocarcinomas samples with targeted DNA sequencing from Foundation Medicine, 394 cases from MSK-IMPACT dataset, along with TCGA lung cancer data. We performed systematic co-mutation analysis, molecular simulation, functional annotation and pathway enrichment analysis. Results: We updated mutational profiling on EGFR gene with hotspots at exon 18, 19, 20 and 21. Among them, EGFR L858R, exon19 deletion, T790M and G719A are top ranking alleles among EGFR mutations. Interestingly, a subset (n = 26 cases) of EGFR T790M mutations parallel with other EGFR mutations, which could affect the TKI binding pocket as inferred by molecular simulations. Furthermore, in advanced lung cancer EGFR mutations co-occurred with known oncogenic mutations in KRAS, MET, NF-1, MAP2K1, ERBB2, and ALK/ROS-1/RET fusions. Functional annotation suggests that concurrent mutated genes and copy number alterations in advanced EGFR mutant lung cancer were enriched in signatures of epigenetic modifiers, genome instability, WNT signaling, and RNA splicing. Compared to early stage TCGA-lung adenocarcinomas, Cell cycle, DNA repair, WNT signaling and androgen receptor-mediated signaling pathways are predominantly altered in advanced EGFR mutant lung cancers. Conclusions: We characterized the genetic landscape of advanced EGFR-mutant lung adenocarcinomas and further dissected concurrent mutated genes with EGFR driver mutations. Our findings provide a rational for polytherapy roadmap for testing in advanced EGFR-mutant lung cancer.


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