Prognostic immune biomarkers in metastatic castration resistant prostate cancer

Resumo

Metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC) is a heterogeneous disease characterised by the lack of durable responses to standard therapies currently approved for its treatment. Clinical outcomes of this disease and its response to experimental therapies could be improved by the molecular characterisation of the tumour and the identification of biomarkers predictive of prognosis and response, but the availability of metastatic tissue samples for research in this setting are limited. The objective of this study is to determine the prevalence of biomarkers with a potential impact in the tumour microenvironment of mCRPC, the correlation between the expression of these biomarkers, and to determine their association with overall survival (OS). In order to do so, mCRPC biopsies from 100 patients were assayed by whole exome sequencing (WES), targeted next-generation sequencing (NGS), ribonucleic acid sequencing (RNAseq), NanoString and immunohistochemistry (IHC), as well as the presence of neuroendocrine features. PD-L1, TcellinfGEP score, and SOX2 were identified as prognostic biomarkers in the mCRPC setting. If validated, predictive biomarker studies incorporating survival endpoints would need to take these findings into consideration.