Search

Background: The current prognostic models for patients with advanced urinary tract cancers were developed and validated in the chemotherapy setting. As immunotherapy has become the backbone of novel treatments, updated prognostic scores are needed., Methods: A comprehensive analysis of inflammatory indexes from peripheral blood and clinical factors was planned on the entire real-world cohort of pretreated patients with advanced urinary tract carcinoma receiving atezolizumab in the prospective, single-arm, phase IIIb SAUL study. Univariable and multivariable analyses with overall survival as the primary endpoint, bootstrap internal validation, Schneeweiss scoring system and calibration test were performed to develop a novel immunotherapy prognostic score., Results: Thirteen clinical variables from 1001 patients were analyzed. The following eight prognostic factors were included in a model: ECOG PS, liver and bone metastases, histology, pre-treatment steroids, systemic immune-inflammatory index (i.e., neutrophils-to-lymphocytes ratio times platelets count), hemoglobin and lactate dehydrogenase. The prognostic model was able to stratify patients into five risk groups with significantly different (P<0.001) median overall survival of NR, 18.0, 8.7, 4.6 and 2.4 months, respectively. The c-index for OS was higher than the Bellmunt Score one (0.702 vs. 0.672)., Conclusions: A novel 5-class prognostic model contemporary to immunotherapy provides robust prognostic discrimination of patients with advanced urinary tract carcinoma homogeneously treated with immunotherapy through baseline affordable and reproducible clinical and laboratory factors. It could be quickly adopted in clinical practice to inform patients about prognosis with immunotherapy and assess the benefit of novel immunotherapy combinations in clinical trials.

Background: Patients with programmed cell death-ligand 1 (PD-L1) ≥50% metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (mNSCLC) and ECOG performance status (PS) of 2 treated with first-line immunotherapy have heterogeneous clinical assessment and outcomes., Methods: To explore the role of immune-inflammatory surrogates by the validated lung immuno-oncology prognostic score (LIPS) score, including the neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) and the pretreatment use of steroids, alongside other prognostic variables. A retrospective analysis of 128 patients with PS2 and PD-L1 ≥50% mNSCLC treated between April 2018 and September 2019 with first-line pembrolizumab in a real-world setting was performed., Results: With a median follow-up of 15.3 months, the 1-year overall survival (OS) and median progression-free survival (PFS) were 32.3% (95% CI: 30.9-33.9) and 3.3 months (95% CI: 1.8-4.7), respectively. The NLR, lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) and pretreatment steroids results were the only significant prognostic factors on the univariate analysis and independent prognostic factors by the multivariate analysis on both OS and PFS. The LIPS score, including the NLR and pretreatment steroids, identified 29 (23%) favourable-risk patients, with 0 factors, 1-year OS of 67.6% and median PFS of 8.2 months; 57 (45%) intermediate-risk patients, with 1 factor, 1-year OS 32.1% and median PFS 2.7 months; 42 (33%) poor-risk patients, with both factors, 1-year OS of 10.7% and median PFS of 1.2 months., Conclusions: The assessment of pre-existing imbalance of the host immune response by combined blood and clinical immune-inflammatory markers may represent a way to unravel the heterogeneous outcome and assessment of patients with mNSCLC and poor PS in the immune-oncology setting., (© 2021 The Authors. Thoracic Cancer published by China Lung Oncology Group and John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd.)

Aim: To explore the feasibility and activity of a histology-based induction combination chemotherapy for elderly patients with clinical stage III non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC)., Patients and Methods: Patients aged ≥70 years with stage IIIA and IIIB lung squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) or adenocarcinoma were treated with three cycles of carboplatin and gemcitabine or pemetrexed, respectively, followed by definitive radiotherapy or surgery. The primary endpoint was the overall response rate (ORR) following induction., Results: Twenty-seven patients, with a median age of 74 years (range=70-80 years) were treated for adenocarcinoma in 14 (52%) and SCC in 13 (48%), clinical stage IIIA in eight (30%) and IIIB in 19 (70%). Grade 3 or 4 toxicity was reported for five patients (18.5%). The ORR was 46% in 12 (partial responses) out of 26 assessable patients., Conclusion: Histology-based induction combination chemotherapy is active and feasible in elderly patients with stage III NSCLC., (Copyright© 2017, International Institute of Anticancer Research (Dr. George J. Delinasios), All rights reserved.)