The use of elevated circulating hepatocyte growth factor (HGF) level as a potential prognostic biomarker in locally advanced pancreatic cancer.

Abstract

429 Background: The hepatocyte growth factor (HGF)/c-MET pathway has pleiotropic functions in tumor progression including invasion and cancer cell survival. The potential use of circulating plasma HGF as a prognostic biomarker is not known. Methods: This was an analysis of plasma HGF in patients enrolled in a single arm phase II study (NCT01821729) of patients with previously untreated locally advanced pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) treated with FOLFIRINOX and losartan followed by chemoradiotherapy before resection was attempted (Murphy JE et al., 2019). Eligible patients from the trial included those who had undergone baseline research labs including HGF. Circulating HGF was measured in the plasma on day 1 of treatment using ELISA, and the median value was used to define high vs low levels for the purpose of analysis. The association of elevated HGF with overall survival (OS) was analyzed by univariable and multivariable Cox regression, adjusting for tumor size (≤ versus > 40 mm) and serum CA19-9 (≤ versus > 37 U/mL). Results: There were 46 eligible patients with a median follow up of 31 months. The median age was 63 (range 42-78) and 52% were female (24/46). Median tumor size was 41.4 mm (range 18–68 mm). There were 41/46 patients (89.1%) with elevated baseline CA19-9. Median baseline HGF was 1,250.55 pg/mL (range 650.9–6,459.1). Median OS was 38.4 months for patients with baseline HGF at or below the median, and 19.3 months for those with elevated HGF. On univariate analysis, elevated HGF was associated with poorer OS (HR 2.28, 95% CI 1.06–4.87, p = 0.03). On multivariate analysis, after controlling for tumor size and baseline CA19-9, elevated plasma HGF remained significantly associated with poorer OS (HR 2.58, 95% CI 1.16–5.70, p = 0.02). Conclusions: In conclusion, elevated baseline circulating plasma HGF is an independent biomarker of poorer OS in patients with locally advanced PDAC treated with neoadjuvant therapy. Further randomized studies are needed to define the negative predictive biomarker value for high plasma HGF and identify the optimal HGF range as well as determine applicability to other stages of disease. These results support the continued investigation of plasma HGF in ongoing clinical trials with PDAC patients.