Association of TGFBR2 mutations with shorter survival in non-small cell lung cancer treated with immune checkpoint inhibitors.

Abstract

e21166 Background: Transforming growth factor beta receptor 2 (TGFBR2) is a transmembrane receptor that plays an important role in both cellular functions and immune reaction, including cell proliferation, cell differentiation and extracellular matrix production. It forms a heterodimeric complex with TGF-beta receptor type-1 and binds TGF-beta. The association between TGFBR2 gene mutations and efficiency of immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) has not been investigated in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Methods: Two published cohorts of NSCLC patients treat with ICIs were used to explore the immunotherapeutic predictive role of TGFBR2 gene mutations, including a discovery cohort (Gandara et al., Nature Genetics, 2018) and a validation cohort(Samstein et al. Nature Genetics, 2019). The Cancer Genome Altas (TCGA) Pan -Lung Cancer dataset was used for prognostic analysis. Results: TGFBR2 mutations were identified in 1.6% (7/429) and 2.3% (8/344) patients with NSCLC in the discovery and validation cohort, respectively. In the discovery cohort, patients with TGFBR2 mutations had shorter progression-free survival (PFS, median, 1.3 months vs 2.7 months; HR = 2.83; 95% CI, 1.33–6; p = 0.0046) and dramatically shorter overall survival (OS, median, 2.4 months vs 11.1 months; HR = 3.46; 95% CI, 1.63–7.35; p = 0.00058) than those with wild-type TGFBR2. Consistent with this, TGFBR2 mutations were significantly correlated with shorter OS (3 months vs 10 months; HR = 3.46; 95% CI, 1.63–7.35; p = 0.00058) in the validation cohort. In addition, no significant difference was found in OS between TGFBR2-mutant and TGFBR2-wild-type NSCLC patients with standard treatment in TCGA cohort (p = 0.821). Conclusions: TGFBR2 gene mutations are associated with shorter survival in NSCLC patients treated with ICIs, suggesting that TGFBR2 mutations be used as a potential biomarker of predicting the efficiency of immunotherapy and guiding NSCLC systemic treatment.