Ahmed Yaman B, Al-Bzour Ayah N, Ababneh Obada E, Abushukair Hassan M, Saeed Anwaar
Faculty of Medicine, Jordan University of Science and Technology, Irbid 22110, Jordan.
Department of Medicine, Division of Medical Oncology, Kansas University Cancer Center, Kansas City, KS 66205, USA.
Cancers (Basel). 2022 Nov 15;14(22):5605. doi: 10.3390/cancers14225605.
Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) became one of the most revolutionary cancer treatments, especially in melanoma. While they have been proven to prolong survival with lesser side effects compared to chemotherapy, the accurate prediction of response remains to be an unmet gap. Thus, we aim to identify accurate clinical and transcriptomic biomarkers for ICI response in melanoma. We also provide mechanistic insight into how high-performing markers impose their effect on the tumor microenvironment (TME). Clinical and transcriptomic data were retrieved from melanoma studies administering ICIs from cBioportal and GEO databases. Four machine learning models were developed using random-forest classification (RFC) entailing clinical and genomic features (RFC7), differentially expressed genes (DEGs, RFC-Seq), survival-related DEGs (RFC-Surv) and a combination model. The xCELL algorithm was used to investigate the TME. A total of 212 ICI-treated melanoma patients were identified. All models achieved a high area under the curve (AUC) and bootstrap estimate (RFC7: 0.71, 0.74; RFC-Seq: 0.87, 0.75; RFC-Surv: 0.76, 0.76, respectively). Tumor mutation burden, GSTA3, and VNN2 were the highest contributing features. Tumor infiltration analyses revealed a direct correlation between upregulated genes and CD8+, CD4+ T cells, and B cells and inversely correlated with myeloid-derived suppressor cells. Our findings confirmed the accuracy of several genomic, clinical, and transcriptomic-based RFC models, that could further support the use of TMB in predicting response to ICIs. Novel genes (GSTA3 and VNN2) were identified through RFC-seq and RFC-surv models that could serve as genomic biomarkers after robust validation.
免疫检查点抑制剂(ICI)成为了最具革命性的癌症治疗方法之一,尤其是在黑色素瘤治疗方面。虽然与化疗相比,它们已被证明能延长生存期且副作用较小,但对反应的准确预测仍是一个尚未填补的空白。因此,我们旨在识别黑色素瘤中ICI反应的准确临床和转录组学生物标志物。我们还深入探讨了高性能标志物如何对肿瘤微环境(TME)产生影响。从cBioportal和GEO数据库中检索了使用ICI的黑色素瘤研究的临床和转录组学数据。使用随机森林分类(RFC)开发了四种机器学习模型,分别涉及临床和基因组特征(RFC7)、差异表达基因(DEG,RFC-Seq)、生存相关DEG(RFC-Surv)以及一个组合模型。采用xCELL算法研究TME。共确定了212例接受ICI治疗的黑色素瘤患者。所有模型均获得了较高的曲线下面积(AUC)和自助估计值(RFC7分别为0.71、0.74;RFC-Seq分别为0.87、0.75;RFC-Surv分别为0.76、0.76)。肿瘤突变负荷、GSTA3和VNN2是贡献最大的特征。肿瘤浸润分析显示,上调基因与CD8 +、CD4 + T细胞和B细胞呈直接相关,与髓系来源的抑制细胞呈负相关。我们的研究结果证实了几种基于基因组、临床和转录组的RFC模型的准确性,这些模型可以进一步支持使用肿瘤突变负荷来预测对ICI的反应。通过RFC-seq和RFC-surv模型鉴定出了新基因(GSTA3和VNN2),经过充分验证后可作为基因组生物标志物。