Current clinical characteristics and demographics are not sufficient to capture aggressive disease in clinical trials of newly diagnosed DLBCL. Novel tools, such as measurement of tumor burden via ctDNA, are needed.   TRANSCRIPT This JCO Podcast provides observations and commentary on the JCO article “Short Diagnosis-to-Treatment Interval is Associated with Higher Circulating Tumor DNA Levels in Diffuse Large B-Cell Lymphoma” by Alig et al. My name is Matthew Maurer, and I am a statistician at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN. My oncologic specialty is lymphoid malignancies. I have no relevant conflicts to disclose. The impact of any clinical research critically depends upon participating subjects being representative of the study population afflicted with the disease of interest and research efficiency is markedly enhanced when cohorts can be compared across studies. In newly diagnosed diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL), there is a standard group of clinical variables that is typically captured and reported across studies. The International Prognostic Index, or IPI has been utilized as a prognostic model in aggressive lymphoma for nearly 30 years and remains relevant today. The IPI and its components, which consist of age, performance status, LDH, stage, and number of extranodal sites, provide the clinical characteristic backbone for trial eligibility and defining high risk disease in frontline DLBCL trials. Assessment of genomic features of the tumor using pathological techniques such as IHC and FISH can further identify high risk subsets of patients. However, despite these well-tested clinical tools to measure the aggressiveness of the disease, there remains significant heterogeneity in patient presentation and outcomes. Clinically, some patients will present with a real or perceived clinical urgency to initiate therapy as soon as possible. This clinical urgency often precludes these patients from enrolling on frontline trials. My colleagues from the University of Iowa / Mayo Clinic Lymphoma SPORE and I explored this phenomenon in our observational lymphoma cohort study by evaluating the time between a patient’s diagnostic biopsy and their initiation of chemotherapy.  We found that this simple measure of diagnosis to treatment interval, or DTI, was highly informative in the setting of newly diagnosed DLBCL.  Patients with a shorter DTI were more likely to be symptomatic, have advanced stage disease, poor performance status, and elevated LDH. Further, patients with a short DTI had significantly inferior outcomes, even after accounting for the standard clinical details of the IPI. These results were validated in a cohort of clinical trial patients from the French Lymphoma Study Association as well as subsequent studies. These data suggest that clinicians are managing patients with aggressive disease more urgently, and our current set of clinical variables is not sufficient to describe and compare patients across studies. Despite its simplicity and retrospective prognostic ability, DTI lacks specificity as a clinical characteristic for future studies. It can be easily influenced in an individual patient by numerous aspects unrelated to disease biology, such as physician preference or a patient’s available access to health care resources. In additional, the typical DTI can vary widely across health systems or institutions. In the paper accompanying this podcast, Alig and colleagues examine the relationship between DTI, conventional risk factors, circulating tumor DNA, and clinical outcomes. A strong association was observed between shorter DTI and increasing tumor burden as measured by baseline metabolic tumor volume and circulating tumor DNA. This is a key biologic confirmation that treatment urgency is directly related to disease biology. Importantly, the authors also showed that ctDNA was a highly informative variable in regards to prognosis in their dataset. ctDNA was an independent prognostic variable after adjusting for the IPI in Cox models for event-free and overall survival, and the prognostic ability of ctDNA was far superior to DTI in univariate models. The association between DTI and disease biology has direct implications for clinical trials in frontline DLBCL. Clinical trials that did not adequately enroll patients in need of urgent therapy were likely biased towards enrollment of patients with lower tumor burden.  In particular, single arm trials of novel therapies are particularly at risk, as these results are often evaluated in light of conventional clinical characteristics and compared to previous studies and/or clinical experience. This may also have contributed to the better than expected outcomes on the control arms in recent randomized trials of newly diagnosed DLBCL. Evaluation of tumor burden using ctDNA or metabolic tumor volume should allow us to better understand the impact of a study’s design on patient enrollment. The amount of tumor is a long-standing prognostic feature for newly diagnosed DLBCL. This has standardly been measured by broad clinical features such as stage, number of extranodal sites, and bulky disease. As the retrospective studies on DTI have shown, however, these features are not sufficient. Novel tumor burden measures like circulating tumor DNA are needed. ctDNA is not without its drawbacks in frontline DLBCL.  It is not clinically available for real-time assessment and significant work remains to be done to make it a routinely available and standardized biomarker, which includes independent validation of the results reported by Alig and colleagues. However, as we continue to develop and test new treatment strategies for DLBCL, we must also develop and test novel prognostic and predictive tools. Alig and colleagues have shown us that ctDNA has the potential to identify features of aggressive disease that our current tools do not. Capturing these features more precisely is vital for us to understand and interpret clinical trial results, as well as ensure future trial designs are enrolling the study’s intended patient population. As part of these efforts, clinical trials in newly diagnosed DLBCL should collect and store the necessary biospecimens to evaluate ctDNA in anticipation of a new generation of standard clinical characteristics. This concludes this JCO Podcast. Thank you for listening.

Journal of Clinical Oncology (JCO) Podcast

ctDNA in DLBCL: A Blueprint for Better Clinical Trials?

This podcast considers the impact of exclusion criteria on clinical trials, generalizability, and the complexity of modernizing eligibility while maintaining trial integrity.   TRANSCRIPT This JCO Podcast provides observations and commentary on the JCO article “Impact of Organ Function-Based Clinical Trial Eligibility Criteria in Diffuse Large B-cell Lymphoma (DLBCL) Patients. Who Gets Left Behind?” by Khurana et al. My name is Richard Little, and I am at the National Cancer Institute. My oncologic specialty is lymphoid and myeloid malignancies. I am a federal employee with no conflicts of interest to disclose.    The authors have contributed a timely and provocative analysis examining the lack of generalizability and disappointing results of repeatedly negative randomized phase 3 trials conducted over the past 15 years failing to improve on R-CHOP.  The authors have proposed that these failures may be in part explained by enrollment onto clinical trials patients who are not really representative of those with the disease, because eligibility criteria too often unnecessarily eliminate patients with laboratory values that reflect organ impairment not pertinent to the agents under study.  To test this inference, the authors leveraged a unique resource:  The Molecular Epidemiology Resource of the University of Iowa/Mayo Clinic Lymphoma Specialized Program of Research Excellence, or SPORE. This SPORE is an NCI-funded research project initiated in 2002 and collects data in a uniform manner among consenting participants with newly diagnosed DLBCL who undergo treatment managed by their physician. This rich database enabled the evaluation of data in patients treated with R-CHOP or R-CHOP-like immunochemotherapy.   The investigators were able to categorize the SPORE participants in reference to the eligibility criteria of the important phase 3 studies recently conducted as either meeting eligibility of the phase 3 studies or not meeting eligibility due to out-of-range laboratory values.  Additionally, the SPORE data in some ways mimics clinical trial data in that events such as disease progression and death are captured, and these outcomes could be evaluated comparatively between patients categorized as clinical trial eligible and not eligible.  They indexed 7 trials, and for example, found that 12.9% of the SPORE participants did not meet eligibility for the PHOENIX study—that is the phase 3 trial of ibrutinib-R-CHOP vs placebo-R-CHOP showing no benefit of the addition of ibrutinib. Not surprisingly, those scored as ineligible had worse outcomes compared to those scored as eligible. For example, indexing eligibility for the PHOENIX trial, the overall survival hazard ratio for those scored not eligible versus eligible was 1.49 with a p-value of .002. The median survival of the SPORE cohort scored as ineligible for PHOENIX had a median overall survival of around 80 months, and the median survival for those sored as eligible had not yet been reached. Interestingly, treatment-related deaths were not found to be increased in the SPORE patients scored as ineligible compared to those scored as eligible,  but death due to progressive lymphoma was higher among those scored as ineligible.    So how does this relate to the inability to improve upon standard DLBCL therapy?    Khurana and colleagues' data highlight several features of clinical trials conduct related to trial outcomes.  The unnecessary exclusion of patients based on criteria not specific to the treatment can translate into eligible patients having a more favorable prognosis compared to individuals with the disease who are excluded from studies, but who nevertheless are treated with standard therapy used as a control in DLBCL clinical trials.  Populating randomized trials with the best prognosis patients can lead to reduced power to detect an outcome difference, even if one exists.  But what about the unnecessary exclusion of patients from clinical trials based on laboratory values that reflect organ dysfunction and poor outcomes as shown in the SPORE patients?  The authors document unequivocally that those patients deemed ineligible are at higher risk of death due to treatment failure: that is they die due to progressive lymphoma more than the SPORE patients scored as meeting clinical trial eligibility criteria. What we don’t know from the study as presented, is whether there were more dose delays and dose reductions among those scored as ineligible. This is fundamental toward an improved understanding of how to repair our clinical trials enterprise in DLBCL.  And what I mean by repair, is to broaden and expand clinical trials access to as many patients as possible and to have rigorous design and conduct of trials to detect true signals. There are two essential elements to address, and this data points the way but does not fully answer the questions.  To make trials generalizable, we must include as broadly as possible those patients with DLBCL.  However, if the SPORE outcomes are explained by an inability to administer therapy as planned in those scored as trial ineligible, then just broadening eligibility criteria could undermine the ability to detect a difference with new effective treatment by including too many patients unable to tolerate the therapy.  For example, some have suggested the negative results of the PHOENIX trial may be due to treatment intolerance among those aged 60 years and over. So it appears that trials increasing generalizability and reaching a positive trial endpoint for a novel treatment have a complex interaction, to say the least. It will be essential as diffuse large B-cell lymphoma therapeutic trials are developed to be mindful of differential prognosis and perhaps interrelated treatment tolerance of patients due to multiple factors, including degree of organ dysfunction.  The exclusion of patients with the disease understudy from clinical trials should be minimized.  Efforts to modernize clinical trial eligibility are being embraced by most stakeholders, and in my opinion is an essential social and medical responsibility for clinical trialists to meet.  The challenge is how to accomplish this important objective and appropriately design studies to enhance the ability to detect the desired study endpoint. To answer the question posed by the authors, we must endeavor to leave no one behind. We can accomplish this through statistical designs such as stratification of the randomization,  powered for the groups of interest -- as one such solution. Separate and specific trials for older or more frail patients is another solution.  And I dare say, we should focus on efforts to eliminate the CHOP backbone and develop better-tolerated therapy that those with organ dysfunction can benefit from. The VIPOR regimen presented by Melani and colleagues at the 2020 ASH meeting provides an example of the type of DLBCL research that could be of interest. The challenge of generalizability and its relevance to negative clinical trial results is becoming clearer if only to recognize the increasing complexity in meeting the needs of our patients.  But isn’t that what motivates us?   This concludes this JCO Podcast. Thank you for listening.

How Can We Expand Eligibility Criteria for Diffuse Large B-Cell Lymphoma Clinical Trials to Serve More Patients?

This multi-institutional study highlights the heterogeneity of Phyllodes tumors of the breast and the importance of accurate pathology assessment and individualized surgical approaches.   LEE WILKE: This JCO podcast provides observations and commentary on the JCO article, Contemporary Multi-institutional Cohort of 550 Cases of Phyllodes Tumors from 2007 to 2017 Demonstrates a Need For More Individualized Margin Guidelines by Rosenberger, et al. My name Lee Wilke and I am a professor of surgery and the Hendrix chair in breast surgery research at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health in Madison, Wisconsin. My oncologist specialty is breast surgical oncology. I have no relationships to disclose related to these studies. As medical students we are asked to adopt an expanded vocabulary to describe a multitude of diseases. The word phyllodes is frequently one of those memorable medical school terms whose origin is Greek and describes a leaf-like growth. Phyllodes are rare tumors accounting for less than 1% of breast malignancies, with just over 2,000 patients diagnosed annually in the United States. Originally, the phyllodes tumor was described as cyst like and, therefore, the historic term cystosarcoma phyllodes was applied. Though these tumors are of connective tissue and fibroepithelial origin, they are infrequently cystic and not a true sarcoma. And therefore, the World Health Organization now classifies them as simply phyllodes tumors. They are importantly, for treatment approaches, sub-categorized into benign, borderline, and malignant based on detailed pathologic review of celularity, atypia, overgrowth, mitotic rate, and the borders of the tumor. Phyllodes tumors are listed in the National Institute of Health's genetic and rare diseases program. On the center's website, surgery is described as the primary treatment for these rare malignancies and 1 centimeter margins or greater are recommended for all subtypes of phyllodes tumors, with a note that these tumors are quote, "often treated with mastectomy", unquote. As specialists caring for patients with breast malignancies, we are rapidly learning that the one-size-fits-all approach is not appropriate, and the same is true for those individuals with phyllodes tumors. In the article that accompanies this podcast, to support a shift towards more individualized treatment, Dr. Laura Rosenberger from Duke University in North Carolina assembled a group of key collaborators from 11 US academic cancer centers to pool and evaluate their treatment approaches and outcomes for patients with phyllodes tumors. The investigators identified a total cohort of 550 patients with phyllodes tumors treated between 2007 and 2017. Consistent with systematic reviews of phyllodes tumor data sets, such as that by Lu et al in Annals of Surgical Oncology, with this JCO publication being the largest, the patients have a median age of 44. The malignant cohort is approximately 10%. And median tumor size is three centimeters, with a range to as high as 29 centimeters. Key facts found within this analysis are that 2% of patients underwent nodal evaluation, all with negative nodes. The addition of either a sentinel node or axillary surgery is not without risks to the patient. And unless the pre-surgical diagnosis raises the question of a simultaneous adenocarcinoma, patients undergoing surgery for a phyllodes tumor should not undergo nodal mapping or axillary surgery as these tumors are primarily local malignancies and do not metastasize via the lymphatic network. This is the first key takeaway from this paper, supporting the work of others that nodal surgery in phyllodes tumors is unnecessary. The second notable finding is the heterogeneity, even among academic medical centers, regarding the surgical approach. Approximately 38% of patients, or 209, proceeded to a second surgical intervention. 51 of these patients, or nearly 10% of the entire cohort, had negative margins at their first surgery. Of the group that underwent a second surgery, only six patients, or 3% of those proceeding to a second intervention, had residual disease. On the opposite end of the spectrum, of those patients with a positive surgical margin, which was 42% of the entire group, 74, or 32% of those with positive margins, did not proceed with a second surgery. These outcomes highlight that even among patients being treated at centers that one would assume would function similarly, patients could have everything from positive margins to additional surgery in the setting of negative margins. What is vital to note at this point, however, is that the recurrence rate for this cohort was only 3.3% or 18 patients-- 15 with a local recurrence and three with a distant recurrence. The recurrences were differentially associated with the phyllodes subtypes, with 1.3% in benign, 5.6% in borderline, and 6.9% in malignant phyllodes. In univariate logistic regression analysis, however, margin status and margin width did not predict for a recurrence and neither did type of surgery or patient age. Clearly, a one centimeter margin for a phyllodes tumor is not needed, just as we are likely finding is true for our adenocarcinomas of the breast. The authors don't go so far as to state that a positive margin is acceptable, but highlight the need for a national registry to evaluate an individualized surgical approach in this rare patient population. A final and third key point from this retrospective but important pooled patient analysis is the primary role the pathologist plays in determining the patient outcome. As I frequently comment to my cancer patients, the pathologist is the most important doctor you never meet. In Dr. Rosenberger's analysis, factors that were influential for local recurrence were all pathological variables-- grade, extent of atypia and overgrowth and tumor size. Currently, there are no College of American Pathologists guidelines for reporting phyllodes tumors. With this and other patient data sets highlighting the importance of these pathologic factors in patient outcomes, perhaps a standardization and education program for identifying each of these key findings within a phyllodes tumor should be developed. Without a good pathologist or team of pathologists, oncologic surgeons lack the tools they need to advise the patient on additional surgery and potentially adjuvant therapy. As the use of adjuvant therapy was small in this data set, conclusions could not be provided for or against radiation therapy. Thus, as with all rare tumors, a collaborative and team approach with development of a national registry is needed across community and academic institutions to standardize and evaluate the outcomes for these patients with the eventual goal of providing a more tailored treatment approach. This concludes this JCO podcast. Thank you for listening.  

The Pathologist, the Surgeon, and the Rare Phyllodes Tumor

In this study of cancer operations conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic, rates of pulmonary complications and SARS-COV-2 nosocomial infections were compared between patients operated on in COVID-19-free facilities and those operated on in non-segregated facilities. Because lower rates pulmonary complications and nosocomial SARS-COV-2 infection were observed in COVID-free facilities, the authors propose a restructuring of surgical facilities and pathways for cancer patients during the COVID-19 pandemic. This JCO podcast provides observations and commentary on the JCO article “Elective Cancer Surgery in COVID-19-Free Surgical Pathways During the SARS-CoV-2 Pandemic: An International Multicenter Comparative Cohort Study, “ by Bhangu et al.  My name is Ken Tanabe, and I serve as Chief of Surgical Oncology at Massachusetts General Hospital, Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School, and Deputy Clinical Director of the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center in Boston, Massachusetts.  My oncologic specialty is surgical oncology.   The devastation and destruction brought about by the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic is difficult to fully comprehend.  At time of this podcast there are more than 28 million infections worldwide and nearly 200,000 deaths in the United States alone.  Hospitals and healthcare networks have been uniformly challenged to provide care and safety for patients and providers. In response to this initial wave, elective operations were cancelled as a strategy to increase critical care resources, preserve Personal Protective Equipment – or PPE, and re-deploy surgical team members to support care for COVID-19 patients.   On a worldwide basis, this amounted to cancelation of a substantial number of operations.  And a significant fraction of these backlogged operations was for cancer.  Once hospitals recognized they could handle the size and peak of the initial wave, they resumed elective cancer operations.  Some hospitals had the capacity to create COVID-19 free surgical units for these operations, as a strategy to reduce the risk of cross-infection of patients.  Subsets of cancer patients are known to be at higher risk from COVID-19 morbidity and mortality, including those with lung cancer.  However, creation of parallel pathways for COVID and non-COVID cancer patients diverts resources and is associated with significant costs.  The relative value of this maneuver is not known, but is of critical importance, particularly in light of catastrophic hospital finances created by the pandemic.   In the article that accompanies this podcast, the authors studied the impact of creation of COVID-19-free surgical facilities.  Specifically, they gathered data from 445 hospitals in which patients underwent operation either in a COVID-19-free surgical pathway, or alternatively underwent operation in a hospital that did not have separate, COVID-free surgical units. The study included over 9,000 patients that underwent cancer operations during the pandemic.  Hospitals in 54 countries are included, though the United Kingdom, Italy, Spain and United States accounted collectively for over 60% of the patients.  A surgical facility was defined COVID-19 free if it had a policy of segregation of COVID-19 patients in three specific areas of the hospital: the operating rooms, the ICUs, and the inpatient units.  Conversely, a surgical facility was not considered COVID-19 free if this segregation was absent in any of these three areas.   There are several key findings.  First and foremost, patients who underwent surgery within COVID-free units were younger and had fewer comorbidities compared to patients operated on in non-segregated surgical units. After adjustment for these differences, pulmonary complication rates were lower amongst patients operated on in COVID-free units compared to those operated on in non-segregated surgical units. The post-operative SARS-COV-2 infection rate was lower in COVID-free surgical units – 2.1% compared to the 3.6% observed in non-segregated units. The preoperative COVID testing rate was higher in the COVID-19-free surgical units.  Specifically, the testing rate was 39% in the COVID-19-free surgical units and only 23% in the non-segregated facilities.  However, in a sensitivity analysis for patients with a negative preoperative swab test, the benefit of COVID-19 free pathways remained apparent. The authors conclude it is likely that differences in SARS-CoV2 transmission rates are responsible for the lower pulmonary complication rates in those operated on in COVID-19-free surgical units.   The authors cite these observations as the basis for their recommendation for, quote, “major international redesign of surgical services -- based on local available resources -- to provide elective cancer surgery in COVID-19-free surgical pathways.”  End quote.  Of note, there are many hospitals and healthcare networks in the U.S., let alone worldwide, that don’t have the resources required to create COVID-19-free operating rooms, ICUs and in-patient wards amidst a devastating pandemic.  And thus, it’s imperative to understand if that is really the lesson learned here.   It is relevant to point out that COVID-19-free surgical units – whether they cause a lower rate of post-operative complications or are merely associated with these outcomes – are sought out by patients.  In my own surgical practice, once we resumed operations after the initial COVID-19 wave, some patients declined or further delayed vital cancer operations for fear of SARS-COV-2 at the hospital, despite my assurances of the strict infection control policies in place.    There are certainly limitations to this study.  The first is that selection bias was present: patients that underwent operation in COVID-19-free surgical facilities were significantly younger and healthier.  Although statisticians have developed strategies to adjust risk in scenarios like this, these approaches do not always completely remove bias.  The second limitation is that this study took place at a time during which relatively few patients were COVID-19 tested prior to operation.  Some of the observed effect in this study may be related to unknown SARS-COV-2 infection in asymptomatic patients.  Only 27% of patients underwent preoperative SARS-CoV-2 testing in this study.  Going forward, all patients are tested prior to surgical procedures.  The current study suggests an effect even when the analysis is limited to patients that were tested preoperatively, but a more robust analysis of post-operative transmission of infection in non-segregated facilities can be performed when all patients are tested preoperatively.    Another important limitation of the study is that the definition of COVID-19 free surgical pathway was arbitrary in the degree of completeness.  In the context of this retrospective, multi-institutional international study, the definition was relatively broad for purposes of inclusion, but simultaneously lacks some common sense, requiring only complete segregation of operating rooms, surgical ICUs, and inpatient wards to separate COVID-19 infected patients from those without infection.    To be designated as a COVID-19 free facility for purposes of this study, it was not required to have segregated facilities for preoperative check-in, separate recovery rooms, separate emergency rooms for patients presenting with post-operative complications, or even separate equipment and staff.  What is the impact of sharing with COVID-19 areas patient transporters, EKG and X-Ray machines, food service racks, language translators, or use of common elevators and corridors, or even common pneumatic tube cannisters in a pneumatic tube system that runs throughout the facility?  If the best performing hospitals that don’t have COVID-19 free pathways perform better than the worst performing hospitals that do have COVID-19 free pathways, what is it that these hospitals are doing that makes the difference?    In short, it seems more than just plausible that establishing infection control Standard Operating Procedures – or SOPs, staff training, and staff adherence to these SOPs are key to controlling spread of infection.  These are likely as important as segregation of just three parts of perioperative care.  In other words, this study demonstrates an association between having separate peri-operative facilities and a reduction in pulmonary complications.  But this type of study is unable to address whether a causal link exists.  Perhaps hospitals with the capability of achieving this segregation through duplicate facilities simply have more resources.  Perhaps they have more capable hospital administration and support that can more quickly implement the newest infection control policies.   Perhaps they have more PPE for hospital staff.  Given that many hospitals and health care networks do not have sufficient resources to create parallel, segregated COVID-19-free facilities for operations, drilling down on these important operational aspects for control of disease transmission is key.   The time period involved in the current report was one during which hospitals were struggling to cope with several challenges.  Of note, between May 14 and July 14 CDC data reveal that an average of 120 patients a day became infected with SARS-COV-2 inside U.S. hospitals.  During this time hospitals were managing gaps in testing – as were evident in the current report – and shortages of PPE required to protect staff and patients.  CDC data suggests hospitals have improved at controlling nosocomial SARS-COV-2 infections since then, with the risk dropping from 2% in mid-May to 1.2% as of mid-July.   These promising results are likely the result of better infection-control methods employed over time.  The impact of this downward trend was exemplified in a study from Brigham and Women’s Hospital that demonstrated only 1 case of nosocomial SARS-COV2 transmission over 12 weeks of the pandemic in which 9,149 patients were hospitalized and 8,656 days of COVID-19-related care were provided.  The infection-control strategies they implemented were thorough, improved over time, and did not involve a COVID-19-free surgical pathway.  The most recent changes implemented in the Brigham and Women's study included enhanced eye protection for employees, universal testing on admission, daily nursing screening for COVID-19 symptoms, and a hospital-wide shift to N95 masks for routine COVID-19 care.    The current study focused on cancer operations, but does control of SARS-COV-2 transmission inside hospital surgical units have as much impact on other kinds of operations? Yes, the observations are relevant more broadly.  Cancer patients are at greater risk for developing severe complications from COVID-19.  But a large segment of the adult population has at least one underlying risk factor for increased susceptibility to infection, as well as increased likelihood of severe complication or mortality.    Razzaghi et all have determined that the prevalence of any of five underlying, non-cancer conditions associated with increased risk for severe COVID-19–associated illness among U.S. adults is 47.2%.  Moreover, particular races have significant higher risk of infection and higher risk of severe complications.    Some health care systems have the resources to create separate surgical units to control nosocomial transmission.  But going forward, it appears that reducing in-hospital transmission of SARS-COV-2 to cancer surgery patients will rely primarily on rigorous implementation of aggressive and widely accepted infection control policies.   This concludes this JCO Podcast. Thank you for listening.

Cancer Surgery in COVID-19-Free Facilities

This podcast reviews the results of the whole genome sequencing study by Samur and colleagues that identified a genomic signature associated with superior survival in patients with newly diagnosed multiple myeloma. Disclosures: SAH has served on advisory boards or as a consultant for Adaptive Biotechnologies, Amgen, Celgene, Genentech, GSK, Oncopeptides, Sorrento; Takeda; has received research funding from Oncopeptides.     This JCO Podcast provides observations and commentary on the JCO article “Genome-Wide Somatic Alterations in Multiple Myeloma Reveals a Superior Outcome Group” by Samur et al. My name is Sarah Holstein, and I am an Associate Professor at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, Nebraska in the United States. My oncologic specialty is plasma cell dyscrasias. I do not have any relationships to disclose related to these studies. The clinical heterogeneity of myeloma has long been appreciated as it is clear there is a broad range of disease behavior, with some patients having indolent disease and others having very aggressive disease. As a result, there has been significant interest in developing risk stratification systems that classify patients into different risk groups, thus providing some information about prognosis and potentially inform treatment decisions. Historically, staging systems were based on factors related to tumor burden. However, it is increasingly evident that the underlying disease biology is a key modulator of risk. Our ability to detect disturbances in the myeloma genome has changed dramatically over time. Metaphase karyotyping represents our lowest “power of magnification”. These studies led to the recognition that in general, hyperdiploidy involving odd-numbered chromosomes is associated with lower-risk disease while high-risk disease can involve translocations of chromosome 14, monosomy 13 and monosomy 17. Use of fluorescent in-situ hybridization (FISH) allowed for a higher power of magnification and identification of more subtle chromosomal abnormalities. Next, gene expression profiling studies utilizing small panels of genes, enabled classification of patients into different risk categories, although there was little concordance between the panels used in the various studies. The advent of deep whole genome sequencing technology has facilitated a much more “high-powered” view of the myeloma genome. In the article that accompanies this podcast, diagnostic bone marrow specimens were obtained from 183 patients enrolled in the IFM/DFCI 2009 study. This phase 3 study enrolled newly diagnosed transplant-eligible patients (up to age 65). All patients received three cycles of lenalidomide, bortezomib, dexamethasone (RVD) induction, underwent stem cell collection and then received consolidation with either 5 cycles of RVD or a single autologous stem cell transplant followed by 2 cycles of RVD. Of note, in the French portion of this study, all patients subsequently received one year of lenalidomide maintenance, while in the US portion, all patients received lenalidomide until progression. The French portion has already been published and showed a 14 month PFS benefit for the transplant arm compared to the non-transplant arm. Results from the US portion have not yet been released, but I would speculate that the PFS and OS for both arms will be superior to the French counterparts, given the existing data supporting the benefit of prolonged lenalidomide maintenance. Deep whole genome sequencing, with a median tumor depth of 75X, was used to interrogate the myeloma genome. Mutational signatures were based on identified single nucleotide variants, small insertions and deletions. The genomic scar score (GSS) was calculated based on allele-specific copy number alterations. A GSS of 5 or less was the cut-off for inclusion in the low GSS group. The goals of the study were to describe mutational loads and processes in order to establish genomically-defined subgroups, gain insight into patterns of evolution from clonal to subclonal mutations, and correlate these findings with clinical outcomes and more traditional risk factors. There were several key findings. First, mutational load varied amongst myeloma subgroups, with hyperdiploid myeloma having the lowest mutational load and t(14;16) having the highest mutational load. Second, analysis of mutational patterns led to identification of five separate mutational processes that contributed to eight mutational signatures. These five processes included: 1) an age-related process, 2) an AID/APOBEC process, 3) somatic hypermutation, 4) DNA repair, and 5) processes with unidentified etiology including the clock-like signature. Samur et al., found that these various processes contributed to different myeloma subgroups in different ways. For example, the age-related process was high in hyperdiploid myeloma, the APOBEC-related process was high in t(14;16) myeloma, the clock-like signature was high in t(4;14) myeloma and the DNA repair process was high in del(17p) and t(11;14) myeloma. Furthermore, analysis of these mutational patterns from a clonal vs subclonal perspective enabled insight into mutational development patterns of different subgroups of myeloma. Next, the GSS was correlated with mutational signature and clinical outcome data. The authors found that the frequency of a low GSS was higher in t(11;14) myeloma and lower in del17p, gain1q21, del1p and del13 subgroups. Patients in the low GSS group had a trend towards a longer median PFS and a statistically significant longer 4-year OS rate than other patients. In particular, patients with both low GSS and gain of chromosome 9 had a superior outcome compared to all other subgroups, with an OS probability of 100%. Patients with either low GSS and no gain(9) or with high GSS and gain(9) had intermediate outcome while those with high GSS and t(4;14), gain(1q) or no gain(9) had the worst OS. Although the numbers are quite small, an interesting finding was that for patients in the low-risk group (low GSS + gain(9)), there was a significantly superior PFS in favor of those patients in the transplant arm compared to the non-transplant arm. Overall, no statistically significant differences were found between the four subgroups and factors such as ISS stage, response, or achievement of MRD negativity.  The numbers in each subgroup were quite small though. Finally, the authors demonstrated that the low GSS could separate hyperdiploid myeloma into low-risk and high-risk subgroups. Overall, these studies are interesting because they provide insight into the mutational processes that drive different subgroups of myeloma and offer a potential method by which to differentiate low-risk hyperdiploid myeloma from high-risk hyperdiploid myeloma. The finding that there was a difference in PFS for patients who underwent transplant vs no transplant in the low-risk group (low GSS, gain(9)) is very intriguing. There has been much discussion centered around whether low-risk patients really “need” to go through a stem cell transplant since in general their outcomes are good. The present study, aside from highlighting the fact that our traditional methods of identifying low-risk disease are likely inadequate, raises the hypothesis that patients with low-risk disease may benefit even more from transplant than other risk groups. However, it is noted that this subgroup consisted of only 28 patients. In addition, it is not clear from the manuscript whether patients were in the US vs French portion of the study, thus differences in study design (i.e., lenalidomide maintenance duration) could impact PFS findings. Clearly, this type of whole genome sequencing analysis will need to be applied to additional prospective studies in order to validate the novel risk stratification system. For now, these results are not practice-changing. However, they provide a potential glimpse into the future, where whole genome sequencing analysis is performed as readily as FISH analysis, and where enrichment strategies using genomic markers are used to design clinical trials. Aside from studies evaluating the use of venetoclax in t(11;14)-positive myeloma and other studies focused on high-risk disease that encompass a variety of high-risk chromosomal abnormalities, the field of myeloma has not yet moved into an era of precision medicine. Whether whole genome sequencing can finally usher us into that era remains to be determined. While this plasma cell-centric analysis is certainly revealing, it is likely that in order to maximally target myeloma, the genomics analysis must be coupled with an equally in-depth understanding of the host’s immune system. This concludes this JCO Podcast. Thank you for listening.

Finding a Needle in a Haystack of Mutations: Using Whole Genome Sequencing to Identify Patients with Low-Risk Myeloma

This podcast describes a study addressing the use of dexrazoxane as a cardioprotectant in a cohort of more than 1,000 pediatric acute myeloid leukemia patients.   Transcript This JCO Podcast provides observations and commentary on the JCO article “Effect of Dexrazoxane on Left Ventricular Systolic Function and Treatment Outcomes in Patients with Acute Myeloid Leukemia: A Report From the Children’s Oncology Group” by Getz et al. My name is Elvira van Dalen, and I am an epidemiologist at the Princess Máxima Center for Pediatric Oncology in Utrecht, The Netherlands and a Coordinating Editor of Cochrane Childhood Cancer. My oncologic specialties are cardiotoxicity and systematic reviews and guidelines in the field of pediatric oncology. I have nothing to disclose. Anthracyclines are widely used in pediatric oncology. Unfortunately, one of their most serious adverse effects is cardiotoxicity, which can occur during or shortly after treatment, but also decades later. In the Dutch LATER Childhood Cancer study, we found a 10.5% cumulative incidence of symptomatic heart failure 40 years after cancer diagnosis in survivors treated with cardiotoxic chemotherapy. The Childhood Cancer Survivor Study and St Jude LIFE show similar results. Siblings report significantly less congestive heart failure than survivors. These are high risks, especially in this young patient population. Cardiotoxicity impairs quality of life and can lead to premature death. Prevention is thus very important. Extensive research has been devoted to the identification of possible cardioprotective interventions, like liposomal anthracyclines, increasing the anthracycline infusion duration and reducing the cumulative anthracycline dose. Concerning the cumulative anthracycline dose, it should be kept in mind that there is no safe dose. Another option is the use of cardioprotective agents like dexrazoxane. As shown in our Cochrane systematic review published in 2011 which is currently being updated, it prevents cardiac damage. But unfortunately, the majority of the evidence comes from studies addressing adult patients with breast cancer and these data cannot be extrapolated to children. In children as of yet only a few randomized trials have been performed, none including acute myeloid leukemia patients. In these pediatric studies, for clinical heart failure there were no significant differences between dexrazoxane and control groups, while results for asymptomatic cardiotoxicity varied with the outcome definition used. All studies were relatively short-term, and we don’t know how longer follow-up will influence these results. Thus far only a few small non-randomized studies including 50 children or less evaluated dexrazoxane in pediatric acute myeloid leukemia, all with limitations. The article by Getz and colleagues that accompanies this podcast adds important new information to the current knowledge of the use of dexrazoxane in pediatric acute myeloid leukemia patients and pediatric patients in general. It presents the results from the Children’s Oncology Group AAML1031 trial investigating the use of dexrazoxane during frontline treatment of pediatric acute myeloid leukemia. Between 2011 and 2016, patients younger than 30 years at diagnosis were enrolled. Almost 98% were younger than 21 years. The analyses included 1014 patients, of which 10% received dexrazoxane consistently at every anthracycline course and 90% were never exposed to dexrazoxane. Anthracycline treatment involved both daunorubicin and mitoxantrone. Low risk patients received a cumulative anthracycline dose of 444 mg/m2, while high risk patients received 294 mg/m2 assuming the daunorubicin equivalency conversion employed by the Children’s Oncology Group at the time of this protocol. Patients were followed for a median of 3.5 years, with an interquartile range of 2.5 to 4.7 years. Cardiac function was assessed using either echocardiography or multigated acquisition scans which were performed at regular intervals. Compliance with cardiac monitoring was more than 90% on-protocol, but less than 60% off-protocol. Left ventricular systolic dysfunction was primarily defined as a shortening fraction of less than 28% or an ejection fraction of less than 55%. In the report by Getz and colleagues that accompanies this podcast, 26.5% of patients consistently treated with dexrazoxane and 42.2% of patients that never received any dexrazoxane developed left ventricular systolic dysfunction. The hazard ratio was 0.55 with a 95% confidence interval of 0.36 to 0.86. There was a trend towards a worse grade of left ventricular systolic dysfunction without dexrazoxane. Some evidence pointed to recovery of systolic function, but as this was based on mean values instead of number of patients below the cut-off value it is possible that patients with good and bad values balanced each other out resulting in an adequate mean value. This can give the impression that there is no problem, while for some patients this might not be true. It is important to note that this was not a randomized trial, which would have provided the highest level of evidence to answer this type of question. Dexrazoxane was administered at the discretion of treating physicians. However, characteristics like sex, age, risk group, treatment arm, compliance with cardiac monitoring and follow-up were similar in both groups. Unfortunately, cumulative anthracycline dose was not reported for both groups, but it was stated that patients completed a median of 4 courses regardless of dexrazoxane exposure. An important question regarding any cardioprotective intervention is whether it can reduce cardiotoxicity without negative effects on anti-tumor efficacy and non-cardiac toxicities. At the moment, despite its clear cardioprotective effects, at least in adults, dexrazoxane is not routinely used in clinical practice. This might be explained by the suspicion of interference with anti-tumor efficacy and the occurrence of secondary malignancies. However, as shown in our Cochrane systematic review no significant differences between treatment groups were identified, which is in line with more recently published randomized trials. Studies often do not report data on anti-tumor efficacy and non-cardiac toxicities, but fortunately Getz and colleagues did. This is important as extrapolation of many of these data to other types of malignancies is difficult. Survival and relapse risk were comparable between groups. And even though this study did report on only a few non-cardiac toxicities, those that were reported were similar. Despite the relatively short follow-up period, four secondary malignancies occurred, three in the non-dexrazoxane group. This was not statistically significant different. None of the secondary malignancies was acute myeloid leukemia, but it might have been difficult to distinguish a secondary malignancy from a relapse. In summary, although this is not a randomized trial, this large study provides new knowledge on the use of dexrazoxane in pediatric acute myeloid leukemia patients with regard to cardiac function, anti-tumor efficacy and non-cardiac toxicities. Overall, dexrazoxane seems to be cardioprotective, at least within the relatively short follow-up period of maximal 4 years, without negative effects on anti-tumor efficacy and non-cardiac toxicities including secondary malignancies. Hopefully the authors will continue to follow these patients for long-term results. Even though this study does have limitations, it definitely adds to the knowledge of the use of dexrazoxane in children. It can help to inform the development of a much-needed evidence-based clinical practice guideline that is currently being developed by the International Late Effects of Childhood Cancer Guideline Harmonization Group. This concludes this JCO Podcast. Thank you for listening.

Advancing Knowledge on the Use of Dexrazoxane in Children With Acute Myeloid Leukemia and Other Childhood Cancers

This podcast reviews the results of the observational study by Ladas and colleagues that found protective associations between dietary antioxidant intake and the occurrence of bacterial infections and mucositis.    TRANSCRIPT   This JCO podcast provides observations and commentary from the JCO article "The Protective Effects of Dietary Intake of Antioxidants and Treatment-Related Toxicity in Childhood Leukemia, A Report From the DALLT Cohort" by Ladas et al. My name is Wendy Demark-Wahnefried, and I am Webb Endowed Chair and Professor of Nutrition Sciences at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, as well as the Associate Director for Cancer Prevention and Control at the O'Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center at UAB in Birmingham, Alabama in the United States. I do not have any relationships to disclose regarding these studies, and my review is grounded by the fact that I am a nutrition scientist with particular expertise in cancer survivorship. The topic of nutrition and cancer generates a great deal of interest, especially once individuals are diagnosed with cancer. This is particularly germane with regard to antioxidants, since some scientists hypothesize that high levels of antioxidants may be beneficial for cancer control while others speculate that high levels may prevent apoptosis of cancer cells and actually impede the effectiveness of cancer therapy. However data are sparse, and there are very few studies of high quality, therefore the paper by Ladas and colleagues is both timely and important. The study enrolled 794 children ages 1 through 18 who were diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia. These children were enrolled from 10 institutions across the continental United States, Puerto Rico, and Canada. The children or their guardians completed age appropriate food frequency questionnaires that assessed dietary intake over the previous month and did so at two time points, soon after diagnosis and after the induction phase of treatment, or roughly a month after the first questionnaire. The nutrients that were studied were vitamins A, C, and E, as well as alpha, beta and total carotenoids-- these are the substances in plant foods that give the food its color-- and zinc. It should be noted that the antioxidant selenium was not studied. Nutrient intake was statistically analyzed in relation to bacterial infection and higher grade mucositis or inflammation of the digestive tract resulting in mouth sores or ulceration of the esophagus. Nutrient intake also was studied in relation to disease-free survival and minimal residual disease. Children were followed for up to 10 years. Of the 513 participants who completed the dietary surveys at both time points, 23% experienced a bacterial infection, and 16% experienced higher grade mucositis. Only 9% had higher levels of minimal residual disease, and 2% did not achieve complete remission. Results showed that children having diets with higher levels of antioxidants had a significantly lower risk of bacterial infection, with risk lowered by 10% to 27%, depending upon the antioxidant. Similarly, children having diets with higher levels of antioxidants had a significantly lower risk of higher grade mucositis, with risk lowered by 17% to 67%, again, depending upon the antioxidant. Importantly, evidence of protection was only observed for nutrients obtained through the diet and not nutritional supplements. In addition, no significant associations were observed between antioxidant intake, either through diet or supplements, and disease-free survival. This study has several strengths, in that it involved the participation of a diverse and ample sample of several children and their parents across several sites. Furthermore, data were collected at two time points. As always, there are limitations, and when relying on self-reported data there is always the risk of inaccurate reporting and misclassification. In addition, and thankfully, the number of children who had higher levels of minimal residual disease or who had not experienced complete remission was very small. And therefore, the study was likely under power to detect any associations between nutrient intake and these outcomes. Finally, because these results emanate from an observational study, cause and effect cannot be inferred. Thus the title of this manuscript, which begins with "The Protective Effects" in quotations, may be a bit of an overstatement. So what are the implications of this study? As noted previously, there are few data in this area, therefore more studies are needed to either confirm or refute these results. And such research is necessary in other cancer populations, such as among adults with other cancers who receive different therapies. Until such time, these data reinforce that a healthy diet may associate with lower risk of common treatment-related toxicities. It is noteworthy that investigators were only able to detect protective associations from antioxidants from dietary sources and not from supplements. These data reinforce both the American Institute of Cancer Research and the American Cancer Society guidelines that recommend that nutrients be obtained from foods rather than from supplements. As such, both clinicians and patients may have an interest in the dietary sources of antioxidants that were studied. Many people already know that citrus fruits are rich sources of vitamin C, but there are also other fruits and vegetables, such as strawberries, cantaloupe, and mangoes, as well as tomatoes, peppers and vegetables in the cabbage family, which also contain high levels of this nutrient. Foods that are high in vitamin E include plant oils, nuts, and seeds. Dark green and orange vegetables, and fruits, such as spinach, broccoli, sweet potatoes, apricots, and peaches are rich sources of carotenoids, which ultimately can be converted to vitamin A. Alternatively, preformed vitamin A in the diet can be obtained from animal products such as dairy products and eggs. Finally, foods rich in zinc include shellfish, poultry, legumes-- meaning dried beans, peas, and peanuts-- and red meat. In sum, these data reinforce current guidelines that encourage consumption of a well-balanced plant-based diet that has ample amounts of vegetables and fruit, at least 2 and 1/2 cups a day, as well as whole grains, nuts, seeds, and legumes. Such a diet may be beneficial in preventing common treatment-related toxicities, and larger studies may be able to discern potential associations with cancer-related outcomes such as disease-free survival. However, more study is required. This concludes this JCO podcast. Thank you for listening. The purpose of this podcast is to educate and to inform. This is not a substitute for professional medical care and is not intended for use in the diagnosis or treatment of individual conditions. Guests on this podcast express their own opinions, experience, and conclusions. The mention of any product, service, organization, activity, or therapy should not be construed as an ASCO endorsement. For more original research, editorials, and review articles, please visit us online at jco.org. This production is copyrighted to the American Society of Clinical Oncology. Thank you for listening.

Better Diet – Fewer Side Effects?

Dr. Erin Cobain reviews the article "Evaluation of Germline Genetic Testing Criteria in a Hospital-Based Series of Women With Breast Cancer" by Yadav et al. The purpose of the study was to determine the sensitivity and specificity of genetic testing criteria for the detection of germline pathogenic variants in women with breast cancer.

Genetic Testing in Breast Cancer Patients: Striking the Balance Between Over Versus Undertesting

The combination of pembrolizumab and lenvatinib is a promising second line option for metastatic or recurrent MSS endometrial cancer, although there can be considerable toxicity and choosing appropriate patients is key.   TRANSCRIPT This JCO Podcast provides observations and commentary on the JCO article “Lenvatinib and Pembrolizumab in Patients With Advanced Endometrial Cancer” by Makker et al. My name is Meghan Shea, and I am an Instructor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, Massachusetts. My oncologic specialty is gynecologic oncology. Patients with advanced endometrial carcinoma have limited options after receiving the carboplatin and paclitaxel doublet for recurrent or metastatic disease. The study that accompanies this podcast evaluates the combination pembrolizumab and lenvatinib, providing a much needed second-line option for this patient population. The approval of single-agent pembrolizumab for tumors with microsatellite instability (from here on referred to as MSI high) does not have immediate relevance for the majority of patients with advanced endometrial carcinoma who have microsatellite stable disease (from here on referred to as MSS). Makker et al. now report the results of an ongoing phase 1b/2 study of pembrolizumab, an anti-PD1 antibody, and lenvatinib, an oral tyrosine kinase inhibitor that targets the VEGF-receptor, in patients with metastatic endometrial carcinoma. Eligibility criteria included patients with an ECOG 0 to 1 who had confirmed metastatic disease with less than or equal to 2 prior lines of systemic therapy. Notably the majority were not heavily pre-treated; 52.8% of patients in the study had only one prior line of systemic treatment. Patients received lenvatinib 20 mg once daily orally continuously and pembrolizumab 200 mg intravenously every 3 weeks – with a maximum duration of 2 years for pembrolizumab. All patients had imaging at baseline and then every 6 weeks for first 24 weeks and then every 9 weeks thereafter. The primary end point was objective response rate at 24 weeks. Forty-one of the 108 patients, 38%, had a response at 24 weeks with a median follow up of 18.7 months.  As expected, the MSI high tumors had a higher response rate of 63.6%, although this was a minority of the study population, only 11 patients. Most importantly, the patients with MSS tumors had a response rate of 37.2% with a median duration of response of 21.2 months. The histology did not appear to impact the response rate – the majority of patients had endometrioid (50.9%), although the study population also contained a reasonable proportion of serous and clear cell (38%) compared to the expected frequency in the general population of advanced uterine cancers. The PD-L1 status positive or negative did not correlate with response. One might question, before accepting a complicated regimen with both oral and IV chemotherapy as a new second-line standard option, whether anyone has studied the activity of either single agent lenvatinib or single agent pembolizumab in a similar population, especially for those with MSS disease. With the caveats of cross study comparisons, it appears that neither single agent is as active as the current combination. For instance, Vergote et al reported results of a phase 2 study of lenvatinib monotherapy for advanced endometrial cancer, where the response rate was only 14.3% with median progression free survival of 5.4 months. Likewise, Ott et al studied single agent pembrolizumab in endometrial cancer with 18 of 19 patients having MSS cancer, resulting in only a 13% response rate and progression free survival of 1.8 months.              So you may be wondering, what’s the catch? The issue is the potential toxicity of this doublet regimen, with 66.9% or 83 of 108 patients, having a grade 3 or 4 treatment-related adverse event. Overall 17.7% of the patients discontinued one or both drugs. Notably, pembrolizumab was never dose reduced - only dose held or discontinued. Most strikingly, 62.9%, roughly two thirds of patients, required a dose reduction of lenvatinib. Only 11 patients (that is 8.9%) stayed on full dose 20 mg of lenvatinib for greater than 6 months. The average dose for lenvatinib was 14.4 mg daily. The toxicity profile of lenvatinib may be related to the fact that it is a multi-targeted tyrosine kinase inhibitor that targets not only vascular endothelial growth factor receptors, but also fibroblast growth factor receptors, platelet-derived growth factor receptor alpha, RET and KIT. There were 51 deaths during this study; the majority occurred during follow up due to progression of disease. However, there were 16 deaths while on study, 4 considered treatment emergent adverse events and 2 judged to be treatment related.  The four deemed treatment emergent were due to gastrointestinal perforation, intestinal obstruction, general health deterioration and metabolic encephalopathy. The two deemed treatment related were from septic shock and intracranial hemorrhage. The National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) guidelines have added the combination of pembrolizumab and lenvatinib to their list of second line therapeutic options, and it also has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). This recognizes the fact that this combination has the highest response rate of the available drugs listed, and thus should be a strong consideration for second line therapy for patients with MSS endometrial carcinoma. However, ensuring that this treatment is appropriate for a given patient is of the utmost importance.  First the patient must be a candidate for immunotherapy – ideally not on chronic prednisone and/or have an active autoimmune disease. In contrast to prescribing single agent anti-PD-1 or anti-PD-L1, a performance status of 0 to 1 is important with this combination. The most appropriate patient should have controlled blood pressure prior to initiating drug, be able to monitor their blood pressures, take their oral chemotherapy as prescribed, and readily report any new symptoms. I avoid prescribing this drug combination if the patient has a bleeding disorder, recent clotting, uncontrolled hypertension, or is at high risk of a fistula or bowel obstruction. Lenvatinib is a renally-cleared drug, and thus patients with a reduced glomerular filtration rate (GFR) require renal dosing. This is especially relevant for patients with recurrent uterine cancer, whose kidney function is dynamic, especially in the setting of hydronephrosis. In my practice, I consider starting patients with normal renal function at 14 mg lenvatinib daily, given that the vast majority of patients on study were eventually dose-reduced. Furthermore, I might start the lenvatinib dosing even lower for patients with dynamic renal function and for those who have a baseline GFR lower than 30. Overall this study provides a promising second line option for metastatic or recurrent MSS endometrial cancer, with responders having a durable response.  Patient selection and dose adjustments are key considerations to avoiding and managing toxicity. This concludes this JCO Podcast. Thank you for listening.

High Reward, High Toxicity: Combination Pembrolizumab and Lenvatinib in Advanced Endometrial Cancer

This podcast will discuss the findings from a phase II trial of gemcitabine, cisplatin and PARP inhibitor therapy in germline BRCA/PALB2 mutant pancreatic cancer and discuss an optimal treatment strategy in this setting.   TRANSCRIPT This JCO Podcast provides observations and commentary on the JCO article “A Randomized, Multi-Center, Phase II Trial of Gemcitabine, Cisplatin with or without Veliparib in Patients with Pancreas Adenocarcinoma and a Germline BRCA/ PALB2 Mutation” by O'Reilly et al. My name is Daniel Renouf, and I am a medical oncologist at the BC Cancer Vancouver Centre in Vancouver, Canada. My oncologic specialty is pancreatic cancer. In this podcast, we will be discussing an important and evolving area that is changing our standard treatment strategies for pancreatic cancer. Progress has been slow for pancreatic adenocarcinoma, which is now the third leading cause of cancer-related death in North America and is projected to become the second leading cause of cancer-related death within the next decade. Modest gains in our treatments have been achieved with new chemotherapy combinations, including FOLFIRINOX and gemcitabine and nano-albumen bound-paclitaxel, yet still the majority of patients diagnosed with advanced disease will live for less than one year. There is a critical need for improved treatment options as well as clinically relevant predictive markers to guide our therapeutic decision making. The first clinically important predictive marker in pancreatic cancer is germline BRCA/PALB2 mutation status, which is present in 5-9% of pancreatic adenocarcinomas. Multiple translational studies and case series have demonstrated distinct molecular features of these tumors, as well as unique clinical characteristics. Germline BRCA/PALB2 mutant pancreatic adenocarcinomas have been noted to be sensitive to platinum agents and be associated with a better prognosis. Despite this data, and a general acceptance within the community that platinum agents are the preferred therapies in this setting, there is minimal prospective trial data specifically assessing the activity of platinum combinations in germline BRCA/PALB2 mutant pancreatic adenocarcinoma. At a plenary session at ASCO 2019 and its subsequent publication, the POLO trial assessed the role of maintenance therapy with a poly-ADP ribose polymerase (PARP) inhibitor (olaparib), compared to placebo, in patients with metastatic pancreatic adenocarcinoma and germline mutations in BRCA/PALB2 who had responded or had stable disease after initial therapy with FOLFIRINOX. This was a positive trial, demonstrating that maintenance olaparib significantly improved progression-free survival compared to placebo. There was no difference noted in overall survival, but this data was not yet mature. The role of combining a PARP inhibitor with platinum-based chemotherapy as upfront treatment in this patient population is yet to be defined.  A previous Phase I trial of gemcitabine, cisplatin and the PARP inhibitor veliparib determined a recommended phase II dose for velipirib in this combination and demonstrated promising efficacy in germline BRCA-mutant pancreatic adenocarcinoma. In the article that accompanies this podcast, Dr. O’Reilly and colleagues report on the results of a phase II prospective trial comparing gemcitabine and cisplatin versus gemcitabine, cisplatin and veliparib in patients with advanced pancreatic adenocarcinoma with germline aberrations in BRCA/PALB2. In the trial, patients with locally advanced or metastatic pancreatic cancer who had not received chemotherapy in the advanced setting, had a good performance status, and who harbored germline aberrations in BRCA/PALB2 were randomized. A total of 50 patients were enrolled, and the results demonstrated good efficacy in both arms, with a response rate of 74.1% in the veliparib arm and 65.2% in the control arm. Median progression-free survival was 10.1 months and 9.7 in the veliparib and non-veliparib arms respectively, and median overall survival was 15.5 and 16.4 months. Of note, for the entire cohort, 2-year overall survival was notably high at 30.6%, and 3-year overall survival was 17.8%. Grade 3-4 toxicities, including neutropenia, thrombocytopenia, and anemia were greater in the veliparib arm. The authors concluded that gemcitabine and cisplatin demonstrated significant activity in BRCA/PALB2 germline mutant pancreatic adenocarcinoma, and the addition of concurrent veliparib did not improve efficacy. Given this promising data, it was concluded that gemcitabine and cisplatin should be considered a standard treatment for BRCA/PALB2 germline mutant pancreatic adenocarcinoma. This is an important trial, as it is one of the first to specifically assess platinum chemotherapy prospectively in this patient population and has important implications for treatment strategies for pancreatic cancer, the first of which is that testing for germline BRCA/PALB2 mutations should now be considered standard of care for all newly diagnosed pancreatic adenocarcinomas. Not only does this have important treatment implications for the patient; it also has strong relevance to the patients’ family members, as it was found to also harbor a germline BRCA/PALB2 mutation. Screening and potential prevention strategies could be considered for other cancers, such as breast and ovarian. Secondly, if a patient is found to have a germline BRCA/PALB2 mutation, the data from this trial in combination with the body of literature in this setting would suggest that first line therapy with a platinum agent should be considered. In this setting, one could consider either FOLFIRINOX or gemcitabine and cisplatin. The efficacy of gemcitabine and nano albumen bound-paclitaxel in this patient population is not clearly defined, but in the context of data from other disease sites also demonstrating increased sensitivity to platinum in this patient population, and given many patients with advanced pancreatic adenocarcinoma are often not well enough to received multiple lines of therapy, a first line platinum combination should be strongly considered. Thirdly, this trial demonstrates that there is no additional benefit from adding a PARP inhibitor to chemotherapy in this setting, but there is added toxicity, and thus this strategy should not be considered at this time. Finally, given that toxicity from platinum-based chemotherapy is cumulative, the question of an optimal maintenance strategy remains. The POLO trial demonstrated that there is activity and a progression-free survival benefit when using olaparib as a maintenance post upfront platinum-based chemotherapy when compared to placebo, and therefore this represents one potential strategy. One criticism of the POLO trial is that many centers do not stop treatment and instead continue therapy without the platinum after an initial response. In patients responding to initial treatment with FOLFIRINOX, maintenance FOLFIRI is often considered. Data from a second line trial of FOLFIRI with or without veliparib presented as a poster discussion at ASCO 2019 by Dr. Chiorean and colleagues noted that BRCA/PALB2 mutant tumors also appear to have increased sensitivity to FOLFIRI. At this time, the optimal maintenance strategy after upfront platinum therapy is yet to be fully defined, and further research in this setting is needed. In addition, to what extent these strategies should be applied to patients with pancreatic adenocarcinomas that are germline BRCA/PALB2 wildtype but have other homologous recombination deficiency defects requires further investigation. In summary, this is an exciting time in pancreatic adenocarcinoma as we now have a clinically important biomarker to guide treatment strategies. This important trial by Dr. O’Reilly and colleagues further solidifies the importance of BRCA/PALB2 germline testing in pancreatic adenocarcinoma and that first line platinum-based chemotherapy should be considered in these patients. This concludes this JCO Podcast. Thank you for listening.

Optimizing Treatment Strategies for Germline BRCA/PALB2 Mutant Pancreatic Adenocarcinoma

Towards improved characterization of immune-related adverse events in the setting of pre-existing autoimmune disease. TRANSCRIPT This JCO Podcast provides observations and commentary on the JCO article “Immune Checkpoint Inhibitor Therapy in Patients with Preexisting Inflammatory Bowel Disease”, by Abu-Sbeih et al. My name is Katy Tsai, and I am Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Division of Hematology/Oncology at the University of California, San Francisco. My oncologic specialty is the treatment of advanced melanoma and non-melanoma skin cancers.   Immune checkpoint inhibitors, referred to as ICIs in this podcast, have transformed the landscape of treatment options in oncology. While ICIs were first approved for the treatment of advanced melanoma in 2011, since that time, ICIs have shown activity in a variety of other histologies. Anti-PD-1 or anti-PD-L1, with or without anti-CTLA-4, are now approved for the treatment of lung cancer, head and neck squamous cell carcinoma, renal cell carcinoma, and many others. While ICIs can result in durable responses, their continued use can be limited by the development of immune-related adverse eventsimmune-related adverse events. Because these events are believed to be autoimmune in nature, there are intuitive safety concerns about ICI use in patients with known autoimmune disease. Can patients with pre-existing autoimmune disease be safely treated with ICI? Are these patients more likely to experience immune-related adverse events related to their autoimmune disease? Is this risk increased if their autoimmune disease is severe, with a history of required immunosuppression? These are all important questions faced by healthcare providers, questions which are not well studied due to the exclusion of patients with known autoimmune disease from pivotal ICI clinical trials.   To address these questions, Abu-Sbeih and colleagues chose to focus on ICI use in patients with pre-existing inflammatory bowel disease. This is a clinically relevant population of interest, given the relatively high incidence of immune-related diarrhea and colitis with ICI use; these immune-related adverse events occur in almost half of patients receiving combination anti-CTLA-4 and anti-PD-1 or PD-L1, about one-third of patients receiving anti-CTLA-4, and less frequently in patients receiving anti-PD-1 or PD-L1 alone. Abu-Sbeih and colleagues conducted a retrospective, multicenter study in which 102 patients – half with Crohn’s disease, half with ulcerative colitis – received ICI between 2010 and 2019. 17 patients received anti-CTLA-4, and 85 received anti-PD-1 or anti-PD-L1. This is a notable cohort of patients, as previous meta-analyses have reported on the safety of ICI use in much smaller numbers of patients with inflammatory bowel disease, and with less detailed clinical characterization of their inflammatory bowel disease. Univariate and multivariate logistic regression were used to assess the risk of gastrointestinal, or GI, adverse events, and was compared to a control population of 11,377 ICI-treated patients without inflammatory bowel disease, from the same participating institutions.   An important observation made by the authors was that the rate of GI immune-related adverse events in the inflammatory bowel disease cohort was significantly higher at 41%, compared to 11% in the non-inflammatory bowel disease cohort. Univariate analysis identified anti-CTLA-4 (given as monotherapy or in combination) as a risk factor for GI immune-related adverse events compared to anti-PD-1/L1 therapy but showed only a tendency toward significance in multivariate analysis, as did inflammatory bowel disease involving the colon. Although none of the collected clinical variables reached significance in multivariate analysis, the authors’ analysis of outcomes in the inflammatory bowel disease cohort is illuminating. Of the 41 inflammatory bowel disease patients who developed diarrhea, 51% had peak grade 3 or 4 diarrhea, 76% received glucocorticoids, and 29% required additional immunosuppression with infliximab or vedolizumab. 4% developed colonic perforation, with half of those patients requiring surgical intervention. Also of note, patients who were identified as having active inflammatory bowel disease within 3 months of ICI start had higher grade diarrhea compared to patients with inactive inflammatory bowel disease. Endoscopy data were also available for 48 inflammatory bowel disease patients. Interestingly, of the 41 patients who were noted to have normal or mild inflammatory findings, 18 (43%) developed any GI immune-related adverse events, 5 (12%) of which were grades 3-4. In the 7 patients with moderate/severe inflammatory findings, 5 (71%) had GI immune-related adverse events of any grade, 2 (29%) of which were grades 3-4.   Despite the higher rate of GI immune-related adverse events and associated complications in the inflammatory bowel disease cohort compared to the non-inflammatory bowel disease cohort, there were no fatalities. Additionally, 48% of patients in the inflammatory bowel disease cohort were identified as having complete response, partial response, or stable disease to ICI therapy, a clinical benefit rate similar to those reported in ICI clinical trials. It seems, then, that the benefits of ICI therapy in this population may well outweigh the risks, particularly for patients with inflammatory bowel disease who may have no viable alternative therapy available for their malignancy.   Overall, despite the inherent limitations of retrospective analysis, this work represents the largest study to date investigating the risk of GI immune-related adverse events in patients with cancer and comorbid inflammatory bowel disease who were treated with ICIs. It provides evidence for increased incidence and severity of GI immune-related adverse events, and complications thereof, in a well-annotated cohort of patients with inflammatory bowel disease. As these patients continued to receive clinical benefit from their ICI therapy, these findings can help better inform pre-ICI treatment counseling in patients with preexisting inflammatory bowel disease, and better prepare them for expected risks of treatment. At the same time, this work also raises a number of questions for further investigation. Is anti-CTLA-4 truly safe to use in this population, or was this limited by the small number of patients receiving anti-CTLA-4 in this study? Should ICI therapy be delayed to allow for optimal treatment of active inflammatory bowel disease, to decrease the risk of severe GI immune-related adverse events? What additional guidance can be given to providers regarding when to initiate additional immunosuppressive therapy, and should this be driven by endoscopic findings? These questions and more can and should be investigated in future larger-scale prospective studies. For the time being, based on the data presented, I would certainly be more cautious about giving a more aggressive immunotherapy regimen – that is, combination anti-CTLA-4 and anti-PD-1/L-1 – in a patient with highly symptomatic inflammatory bowel disease. Also, while numbers in this study were small, it seems that endoscopic evaluation prior to ICI start could be helpful in risk stratifying for severe GI IRAE. While inflammatory findings on endoscopy may not necessarily be an absolute contraindication to use of ICI, it seems these results would certainly be helpful in shared decision-making with the patient regarding their risk of developing GI IRAE and weighing other potential treatment options. Finally, and most importantly, this data demonstrates that some patients with inflammatory bowel disease who receive ICI for their malignancy can derive clinical benefit with manageable toxicities, suggesting that the mere presence of comorbid inflammatory bowel disease should not be a blanket exclusion criterion for ICI clinical trials.   This concludes this JCO Podcast. Thank you for listening.

Immune Checkpoint Inhibitor Use in Patients With Inflammatory Bowel Disease: A Closer Look

This podcast describes a study examining aerobic capacity in a cohort of over 1200 adult survivors of childhood cancer and related impairments of cardiac, pulmonary and neuromuscular body systems, to understand how aerobic capacity influences all-cause mortality. TRANSCRIPT This JCO Podcast provides observations and commentary on the JCO article 'Exercise Intolerance, Mortality, and Organ System Impairment in Adult Survivors of Childhood Cancer' by Ness et al. My name is Kristin Campbell, and I am a licenced physical therapist and associate professor in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. My oncologic specialty is in rehabilitation, primarily related to breast cancer. Exercise intolerance is a global measure of functional capacity that reflects the complex integration of body systems. It is well established in the general population that exercise intolerance is predictive of future cardiovascular health and mortality. Whether this relationship also existed for adult survivors of childhood cancer was examined by Ness and colleagues in the article that accompanies this podcast. . In the largest study to date of its kind, this manuscript reports on a comprehensive and methodologically rigorous examination of exercise intolerance measured by a gold standard maximal cardiopulmonary exercise test in over 1200 adult survivors of childhood cancer who are part of the St. Jude’s Lifetime Cohort Study. The first main finding is the low levels of exercise capacity in this sample of childhood cancer survivors despite a relatively young mean age of 35 years. The observed maximal aerobic capacity, or VO2peak, ranged on average between 25-27 ml/kg/min, which fall into the “poor” or “very poor” categories of age and sex matched normative values. Compared to 285 community controls who were friends or family members of the cohort patients, the observed maximal aerobic capacity values for childhood cancer survivors were on average 22% lower. In fact, these values are actually more consistent with values seen in healthy adults in their seventies or eighties. Furthermore, the low value of maximal aerobic capacity may also be an underestimate. Thirteen percent of individuals in the St. Jude’s cohort who agreed to participate in the study were not cleared to undertake the maximal cardiopulmonary exercise test due to recent diagnosis of cardiac or pulmonary disease, or lab values and symptoms indicating cardiac or pulmonary issues. This suggests that the prevalence of exercise intolerance may be even greater in a real-world clinical setting than that observed in this cohort. To examine the association between exercise intolerance and mortality, the authors defined exercise intolerance as a maximal aerobic capacity of < 85% of predicted VO2peak. Using this approach. 56% of childhood cancer survivors were categorized with exercise intolerance compared to only 26% in controls. In addition to the high prevalence, exercise intolerance in childhood cancer survivors increased hazard of death nearly four-fold compared to those without exercise intolerance. Of the 24 deaths observed, 21 were seen in those categorized as having exercise intolerance compared to only 3 in those categorized without exercise intolerance. This highlights the potential importance of developing and implementing effective interventions that aim to increase physical activity levels and exercise tolerance in childhood cancer survivors with the goal of improving long-term health and survival. A unique feature of this study is that the authors also undertook comprehensive measures of host, treatment, and lifestyle factors to better understand how these factors influence exercise intolerance. These additional measures included cardiac imaging at rest, autonomic response, measured by blood pressure response to the maximal graded exercise test, standard pulmonary function testing, quadriceps strength testing, and peripheral sensorimotor function using the modified total neuropathy scale. This data provides a rare look into the acute and chronic responses to exercise of the cardiovascular, pulmonary, autonomic and neuromuscular systems in those exposed or not exposed to cardiotoxic agents and will appeal to those an interest in exercise physiology. Odds of exercise intolerance were highest with reporting 30 Gy of chest radiation, >20 Gy of cranial radiation and receipt of carboplatin. As a result, the authors suggest that even asymptomatic childhood cancer survivors who have received these treatments be screened by medical providers for any required medical management prior to recommending or implementing an exercise program.  Furthermore, while ejection fraction of 1.5 SD above age- and sex-predicted increased the odds of exercise intolerance with an odds ratio of 1.71 in those exposed to cardiotoxic agents and an odds ratio of 1.29 in those not exposed to cardiotoxic agents. The authors suggest that the use of echocardiology derived strain be expanded from current published guidelines from the American Society of Clinical Oncology on Prevention and Monitoring of Cardiac Dysfunction to identify early cardiac dysfunction in childhood cancer survivors with exercise intolerance and normal ejection fraction. The study does have some key limitations. It is cross-sectional in design, making it difficult to assign temporal relationships between impairments in body systems and exercise tolerance. For example, is it the treatment that causes impairments in body systems that then limit exercise tolerance, or does situational inactivity due to side-effects of cancer treatment drive exercise intolerance and this in turn negatively impacts the exercise response of body systems? Furthermore, while there was a high participation rate and participants did not differ from non-participants by age, race or sex, not all eligible survivors enrolled. This may over or underestimate the prevalence of exercise intolerance or impact on mortality. In considering the implications of these findings to clinical oncology, the authors acknowledge that adult survivors of childhood cancer face unique challenges in engaging in physical activity. In light of the high prevalence of exercise intolerance in childhood cancer survivors and the association to all cause mortality, the authors suggest that survivors may require referral to trained exercise specialists to learn how to accommodate specific impairments and deficits in order to reap the benefits of engaging in exercise. In the United States, the appropriate exercise specialists could include physical therapists, occupational specialists, certified exercise physiologists or physical medicine and rehabilitation specialists. Oncology providers are encouraged to include these individuals on their care teams and establish a connection to available programming in their healthcare facility or community to provide adult survivors of childhood cancer with greater access to appropriate exercise programming aimed at improving exercise tolerance. This concludes this JCO podcast. Thank you for listening.

The High Prevalence of Exercise Intolerance in Adult Survivors of Childhood Cancer Is Predictive of All-Cause Mortality

This podcast describes the results of the BLOOM study, evaluating the efficacy of osimertinib in EGFR-mutated lung cancer with leptomeningeal disease after failure of prior EGFR TKI therapy. TRANSCRIPT This JCO Podcast provides observations and commentary on the JCO article “Osimertinib In Patients With Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor Mutation-Positive Non-Small-Cell Lung Cancer and Leptomeningeal Metastases: The BLOOM Study” by Yang et al. My name is Jürgen Wolf and I am the medical director of the Center for Integrated Oncology at the University Hospital of Cologne in Germany. I am a medical oncologist with expertise in personalized lung cancer care.   About 10% of patients with advanced EGFR-mutated lung cancer suffer from leptomeningeal disease. While this disease manifestation in non-small-cell lung cancer is generally associated with a particularly poor prognosis, with survival times of only a few months, the question arises whether treatment with specific tyrosine kinase inhibitors might enable a better disease control. Most studies evaluating the efficacy of 1st and 2nd generation EGFR-TKIs in leptomeningeal disease were retrospective and difficult to interpret, given the heterogeneity of the disease as well as of the preceding treatment procedures. Small prospective studies with patient numbers below 20 tested standard dose erlotinib or afatinib as well as high-dose pulsatile EGFR TKI treatment and reported disappointing results with survival times of around 4 months only.   The 3rd generation EGFR TKI osimertinib initially was approved for T790M positive failure of 1st and 2nd generation EGFR TKIs and is now commonly regarded as 1st line standard treatment for EGFR-mutated lung cancer based on a superior progression-free survival, overall survival and toxicity profile. In studies with primates and healthy volunteers, osimertinib has been shown to exert a higher blood-brain barrier permeability and a higher brain exposure compared with other TKIs. In the AURA clinical development program for osimertinib, 22 patients with T790M-positive relapse after EGFR TKI treatment and leptomeningeal disease were retrospectively identified, and an impressive median overall survival of 18.8 months was reported. A small prospective Japanese trial evaluated osimertinib in 13 patients with T790M-positive leptomeningeal disease which, however, could be confirmed only in 5 patients. Responses were seen in some patients, and the median progression free survival for all patients was reported with 7.2 months.   The BLOOM study part B, which is discussed in this podcast, is a multicenter phase I study evaluating osimertinib in EGFR-mutated lung cancer patients with leptomeningeal metastases and failure of previous EGFR TKI treatment. Study objectives were the assessment of clinical parameters like response, overall survival neurological status, and safety but also pharmacokinetics in blood and cerebrospinal fluid. Main inclusion criteria included confirmed diagnosis of EGFR Exon 19 deletion or L858R mutation and confirmation of leptomeningeal disease by positive cytology of cerebrospinal fluid and at least one leptomeningeal site assessable by MRI. There were two sequential cohorts, one unselected for the T790M mutation and with stable non-CNS disease at enrollment, and one for T790M positive patients without the requirement for stable non-CNS disease. Osimertinib dose was 160 mg once daily, which is twice the approved dose. Besides investigator-based response assessment, according to RECIST, leptomeningeal disease was also assessed by a neuroradiological blinded central review according to the RANO-LM working group criteria, which integrates clinical examination, cerebrospinal fluid cytology and neuraxis MRI.   41 patients from South Korea and Taiwan were included, 20 in the unselected and 21 in the T790M-positive cohort. About 70% of the patients had co-existing brain mets and about 50% prior radiotherapy. For 4 patients, no response data from the independent review were available.   The confirmed overall response rate for leptomeningeal disease was impressive at 62% as assessed by blinded independent review and nearly identical between both cohorts.  By comparison, the overall response rate was only 27% by investigator assessment, which, in turn, revealed a higher stable disease rate. Prior brain radiotherapy had no influence on efficacy. Median duration of response was comparable between blinded independent review and investigator, with 15.2 and 18.9 months, respectively. In about one third of the evaluable patients confirmed CSF clearance could be observed. PK analysis indicated that plasma concentration of osimertinib and its active metabolites reached steady state by day 15; the ratio for osimertinib exposure in cerebrospinal fluid vs. plasma was around 16%.   Surprisingly, only half of the patients had an abnormal neurological baseline assessment, most of them with mild symptoms. Symptom stabilization occurred in 54% during treatment; only 5% showed regression of neurological functions.   Overall, median progression-free survival, as assessed by the investigators, was 8.6 months and median overall survival 11 months. Progression-free survival and overall survival differed markedly between both cohorts. For instance, overall survival was 16.6 months in the unselected and 8.1 months in the selected group. Possibly, the requirement for stable non-CNS disease in the unselected group was partly responsible for the better survival outcome in this subset . However, this has to be interpreted cautiously in view of small patient numbers and large confidence intervals.   Osimertinib 160mg was well tolerated in the majority of patients with the known osimertinib side-effect profile. However, 24% of the patients suffered from adverse events grade 3 or more—possibly related to osimertinib, according to the investigators’ assessment. Dose reduction had to be performed in 12% and discontinuation of treatment in 22% of the patients due to adverse events. 17% of the patients had fatal events that did not appear to be causally related to osimertinib.   What can we learn from this study? This is the largest prospective study so far in this setting and osimertinib clearly shows clinical efficacy. The study methodology was sound, with response assessment by blinded independent review and based on RECIST criteria as well as on the RANO criteria established in particular for leptomeningeal disease. The overall response rate of leptomeningeal disease of around 60% and the duration of response of around 15 months is clinically relevant in particular, as it is correlated with improvement or at least neurological stabilization in most patients. Although the toxicity of the treatment is substantially higher than reported in osimertinib trials so far, it is manageable, and the risk/benefit ratio appears to be favorable.   What are the limitations of the study? Patient numbers are small, and the patients are heterogeneous with respect to several important factors such as pretreatment whole-brain radiotherapy, occurrence of simultaneous CNS metastases and neurological symptoms. Thus, absolute values for efficacy have to be interpreted cautiously, and comparison with already published trials remains difficult. Also, unfortunately in view of the toxicity, the question remains open whether the 160mg dose, which is not approved, is actually necessary. Finally, since osimertinib increasingly becomes the first-line treatment standard in EGFR-mutated lung cancer, the number of patients with failure of 1st- or 2nd-generation EGFR TKI treatment will decrease.   Despite these limitations, the trial provides the most convincing data so far in this special patient population and, in my opinion, defines  an important new option to consider for patients with EGFR-mutated lung cancer and leptomeningeal disease after failure of previous EGFR TKI treatment.   This concludes this JCO Podcast. Thank you for listening.

Leptomeningeal Disease in EGFR-Mutated Lung Cancer: Can We Finally Define a Standard Treatment?

This podcast reviews the results of KEYNOTE 164 investigating the use of pembrolizumab for mismatch repair deficient metastatic colorectal cancer, the place of this agent in the current clinical paradigm, and future directions to identify which patients are most likely to benefit from this treatment strategy. TRANSCRIPT This JCO Podcast provides observations and commentary on the JCO article 'A Phase II, Open-Label Study of Pembrolizumab in Treatment-Refractory, Microsatellite Instability-High/Mismatch Repair-Deficient Metastatic Colorectal Cancer: KEYNOTE-164' by Le et al. My name is Dustin Deming, and I am an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin Carbone Cancer Center in Madison, Wisconsin. My oncologic specialty is gastrointestinal oncology. Microsatellite instability high status or mismatch repair deficiency is found in approximately 15% of early stage colorectal cancers, but only 3-4% of metastatic colorectal cancer. The mechanisms by which these cancers acquire their DNA repair aberrations can vary, including germline mutations, somatic mutations and promoter methylation, which is often observed in the setting of the hypermethylation phenotype associated with BRAF mutations. This distinct colorectal cancer subtype is of particular interest for immunotherapy strategies as the lack of adequate mismatch repair can lead to 1000s of mutations and also fusions leading to the potential for expression of more neoantigens.   This world-wide phase 2, open-label study enrolled 124 patients with microsatellite instability high or metastatic mismatch repair deficient colorectal cancer following 2 or more lines of standard therapy in cohort A and following 1 or more lines of therapy in cohort B. Patients received pembrolizumab 200 mg every 3 weeks, up to 2 years, until progression, unacceptable toxicity, or withdrawal. The primary endpoint was objective response rate by Response Evaluation Criteria in Solid Tumors version 1.1 by independent central review and secondary endpoints included duration of response progression-free survival, overall survival, safety and tolerability.   At the time of this report the median follow-up for cohort A was 31.3 months and 24.2 months for cohort B. The objective response rate was 33% for both cohorts. This includes 7 patients who achieved a complete response. The median PFS was 2.3 months for cohort A and 4.1 months for cohort B. For those patients that developed an objective response the duration of response was quite prolonged with the median duration of response not reached in either cohort. The median overall survival was 31.4 months for cohort A and not reached in cohort B. This treatment was well-tolerated in this population with the most common toxicities being fatigue, pancreatitis, and increased alanine aminotransferase or lipase.   Overall pembrolizumab is an exciting addition to the treatment strategy for patients with metastatic mismatch repair deficient cancers. Based on these results, in part, this agent is now FDA approved for patients with previously treated microsatellite instability high or mismatch repair deficient metastatic colon cancers after fluoropyrimidine, oxaliplatin, and irinotecan, and for patients also for non-colorectal solid tumors following at least one prior therapy, regardless of tumor type or origin. This was the first FDA approval of a tumor histology agnostic anticancer therapy.   Long-term follow-up from this, and similar cohorts, is required to further define the duration of response for these patients, as there is hope that some of these patients could even be cured. Unfortunately, it is only a minority of patients that seem to benefit from this approach as demonstrated by the short median progression free survival in both cohorts. A better understanding of which patients are likely to benefit from immunotherapy approaches are clearly needed.    The presence of Lynch syndrome was not captured in this study to evaluate for differential response in this setting. The BRAF mutation status was collected and across both cohorts 14 patients had BRAF mutant cancers. The response rate for these patients was 43%. A similar benefit was also observed in KRAS or NRAS mutant and wild-type cancers. This study was limited in its ability to further assess those factors that could influence pembrolizumab response given the relatively small sample size and limited biospecimen collection.   Further clinical trials are investigating the use of anti-PD1 therapies for these patients in the first-line and adjuvant settings, in combination with chemotherapy and with other immune checkpoint agents, such as CTLA4 and LAG3, among others. This includes Checkmate 142, which is a phase II study that is examining nivolumab and ipilimumab in a cohort of 46 patients with microsatellite instability high or mismatch repair deficient colorectal cancer in the first-line setting. Preliminary results were presented at the 2018 European Society of Medical Oncology meeting demonstrating a 60% objective response rate and a 12 month progression free survival of 77%. These early results are promising, but further investigation is needed.   As we look forward to which factors could be leading to a lack of clinical benefit from these agents it is important to consider those factors that are intrinsic to the cancer cells, tumor microenvironment, and patient specific factors. Tumor cell intrinsic factors include important cell attributes for the immune response such as the tumor mutation burden, MHC class I expression, including beta-2-microglobulin expression, the mutation profile, including alterations in WNT signaling shown to be important for immunotherapy resistance in metastatic melanoma, and tumor heterogeneity. There is also a growing understanding of factors that are important within the tumor microenvironment for tumors to be permissive to immune cell infiltration. These factors include differences in the immune and fibroblast cell subtypes present and also the presence of certain matrix proteins. This includes a matrix proteoglycan called versican that my laboratory and others have demonstrated has immunosuppressive properties, but can be cleaved by ADAMTS proteases to an immunostimulatory fragment. Additionally, patient specific factors need to be considered such as the microbiome, immunosuppression and adverse event management.   In summary, the results of KEYNOTE 164 are a significant advance for patients with microsatellite instability-high and mismatch repair deficient cancers. Long-term follow-up from this study and further studies into the most efficacious clinical setting to use these agents will continue to advance the clinical use of immunotherapy options for these patients.   This concludes this JCO Podcast. Thank you for listening.

Advancing Treatment Options for Mismatch Repair-Deficient Metastatic Colorectal Cancers

This podcast evaluates results from a phase II clinical trial of pembrolizumab for relapsed Mycosis Fungoides and Sezary Syndrome in the context of the current systemic treatment landscape for this disease. TRANSCRIPT This JCO Podcast provides observations and commentary on the JCO article "Pembrolizumab in Relapsed and Refractory Mycosis Fungoides and Sezary Syndrome: A Multicenter Phase II Study" by Khodadoust et al. My name is Jennifer Amengual, and I am an Assistant Professor of Medicine at the Columbia University Irving Medical Center in New York, New York, USA. My oncologic specialty is lymphoma. Mycosis fungoides, otherwise known as MF, and Sezary Syndrome, its leukemic variant, are rare subtypes of cutaneous T-cell lymphoma. Although most patients with MF have indolent disease, those with advanced stage MF often experience resistance to systemic therapy with a persistent and progressive disease course, which has a negative impact on overall well-being and survival. Patients may have intense pruritus, which can then put them at increased risk for staphylococcus infection, sepsis and in turn can trigger disease flare. Advanced-stage MF is a chronic disease that is not considered curable; therefore, it is necessary to consider management strategies that provide symptom relief and can be maintained over a long period of time. Most patients cycle through a multitude of therapies, often including skin-directed and, later, systemic therapies. Many of the acceptable therapies are derived from retrospective studies or single-arm trials; therefore, it is not possible to objectively compare outcomes and toxicity. In order to put the outcomes of pembrolizumab in context of other acceptable treatment modalities, I will discuss some of these treatments now. Systemic retinoids, such as bexarotene, are taken orally and can induce an overall response of 45-55%. The drug is well tolerated but can lead to hypertriglyceridemia and hypothyroidism, requiring monthly monitoring and frequent treatment with lipid-lowering agents and thyroid hormone replacement. Low-dose methotrexate, administered either orally or by intravenous infusion weekly, can lead to response rates between 30 and 50%. Common side-effects include mucositis, cytopenias and gastrointestinal upset. Pralatrexate is a novel antifolate drug that when studied using half the dose of that which is approved for PTCL , induced a 45% response rate for patients with MF. The treatment is also well tolerated, with the most common side-effects being mucositis and thrombocytopenia. There are 2 histone deacetylase inhibitors approved for use in MF and Sezary Syndrome. Both romidepsin and vorinostat have overlapping toxicity profiles, including gastrointestinal disturbances, fatigue, anorexia, and cytopenias. Romidepsin is also associated with ECG abnormalities. In patients with cutaneous T cell lymphoma, romidepsin has demonstrated a response rate of 34% and is associated with a median duration of response of 15 months. Vorinostat, an oral drug, has demonstrated a response rate of 30%. Recently, 2 biologics have been in used for patients with MF. Brentuximab vedotin is an antibody drug conjugate which targets the surface marker CD30 and brings monomethyl auristatin E into the cell. It is associated with a response rate of 70% in MF. Responses are significantly better in those with greater than 5% of CD30 expression. The most common side-effect is peripheral neuropathy. Mogamulizumab is a humanized antibody directed against the chemokine receptor CCR4.  This agent was studied in a randomized trial compared to vorinostat, where it led to a PFS of 7.7 months and response rate of 28%. The most common adverse events were attributed to infusion reactions, rash, diarrhea, and fatigue. There was also an increased risk of graft-versus-host disease in patients who subsequently went on to allogenic transplant, which needs to be considered when using this treatment strategy. As you can see, there are many different approaches to the treatment of advanced-stage MF and Sezary Syndrome, and the drugs I have discussed do not encompass an exhaustive list. Immune checkpoint antibodies against Programmed cell death protein 1 otherwise known as PD-1 interfere with inhibitory signaling pathways expressed on exhausted T-cells and wake up these cells allowing them to perform anti-tumor activities. The investigators rationalize the use of PD-1 inhibitors in MF and Sezary syndrome given PD-1 dysfunction and altered expression on MF cells and  the skin microenvironment. The Cancer Immunotherapy Trials Network performed a multicenter phase II single-arm study of pembrolizumab in 24 patients across 8 centers with relapsed or refractory MF or Sezary Syndrome. Of the 24 patients enrolled, 9 had MF and 15 had Sezary syndrome. Most had advanced disease represented by tumor stage disease, erythrodermic presentation, or were stage IIIB or higher. Patients received a median of 4 prior lines of systemic therapy. In addition, 4 patients had evidence of histologic large cell transformation. These represent some of the most challenging clinical situations. Pembrolizumab was administered every 3 weeks for 24 months or until withdrawal of consent, adverse reactions or investigator’s decision. The therapy was well tolerated, with no grade 4 or 5 immune-related adverse events. There were, however, 11 immune-related adverse events observed among 9 patients. This led to discontinuation of treatment in 4 patients, all due to grade 3 events including pneumonitis, duodenitis, hepatitis, and a corneal ulcer. Interestingly, over half of the patients with Sezary Syndrome experienced a flare of their symptoms early in their treatment course. This manifested as increased erythema, pruritus, and peripheral edema. Patients were managed with topical steroids and close observation. Only 1 patient had a prolonged reaction requiring systemic therapy, and no patients were discontinued from therapy due to flare of their disease. Patients with MF did not experience any skin toxicity. The authors investigated the relationship of this reaction to response and found that 3 of 8 Sezary patients who experienced a skin flare went on to achieve a response, whereas only 1 of the 7 Sezary patients who did not have a flare achieved a response. Using mass cytometry profiling of PBMCs, the authors observed a sevenfold increase in PD-1 expression on circulating Sezary cells in patients who experienced a flare. Although these observations were made across a small number of patients, it will be worthwhile to pay attention to this in future studies to determine if this is a true predictor for flare reaction or response. Pembrolizumab demonstrated significant clinical responses in 9 of 24 patients, leading to an overall response rate of 38%. This falls right into the range with other acceptable treatment options. Patients were heavily pretreated, yet the number of prior lines of therapy did not impact the response to pembrolizumab, possibly owing to non-overlapping mechanism of action. In addition, responses were seen in both MF and Sezary patients and those with erythrodermic and tumor stage presentations. There was a trend toward better outcomes in the MF patients. Responses were durable, and the median duration was not reached within a follow-up period of 58 weeks. The 1-year PFS was 65%, and OS was 95%. Two responding patients relapsed 8 to 12 weeks after discontinuation of treatment. The authors discuss that this may indicate the need for continuous treatment in this patient population, which is contrary to the general treatment strategy used for checkpoint inhibitors in other malignancies. Although this study only enrolled 24 patients, pembrolizumab appears to have similar outcomes as other drugs used in advanced-stage MF and Sezary Syndrome, with an acceptable toxicity profile. It produces a long duration of response, making it an attractive addition for patients suffering from this disease. Pembrolizumab does not have overlapping mechanism of action with most of the drugs used today and can therefore be easily integrated into the sequence of treatment for patients with MF and Sezary Syndrome. Finally, it is possible that pembrolizumab’s effects will enhance those seen with other agents. We should look forward to confirmatory clinical trials of pembrolizumab for the management of patients with MF or Sezary Syndrome. This concludes this JCO Podcast. Thank you for listening.

Keeping Mycosis Fungoides in Check: A Study of Pembrolizumab for Relapsed/Refractory MF and Sezary Syndrome

The Journal of Clinical Oncology (JCO) serves its readers as the single most credible, authoritative resource for disseminating significant clinical oncology research. Usually presented in conjunction with an original report and an editorial published on www.jco.org, the JCO podcasts enable readers to stay current on the latest research while placing the results into a clinically useful context.