Low TP53 variant allele frequency as a biomarker for anti-programmed death (ligand) 1 monotherapy in lung adenocarcinoma

Background

TP53 mutation heterogeneity should be considered when using TP53 as a predictive biomarker for anti–programmed death (ligand) 1 (PD-(L)1) monotherapy in lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD). However, whether TP53 variant allele frequency (VAF) should also be considered remains unknown.

Methods

Patients with LUAD from both published research and the local cohort were included to discover and validate the relationship between TP53 VAF and the efficacy of PD-(L)1 inhibitors. The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) LUAD data were included for genomic, transcriptomic, and tumor microenvironment analysis.

Results

Among 159 patients in the discovery cohort, low TP53 VAF patients (VAF ≤ 25%) experienced significantly longer progression-free survival (PFS) than both high TP53 VAF (5.4 vs. 3.3 months; p = .021) and TP53-wild-type patients (5.4 vs. 2.5 months; p = .011). Multivariate Cox regression revealed low TP53 VAF as an independent biomarker of better efficacy. Among 50 patients in the combined validation cohort, median PFS of low TP53 VAF patients was also significantly longer than that of high TP53 VAF patients (12.0 vs. 2.1 months; p = .037). Analyzed with 469 TCGA LUAD samples, low TP53 VAF is associated with significantly higher PD-L1 expression, enrichment of gene sets related to T-cell activation, T cell–mediated immunity, and interferon-γ signaling pathways, and independently associated with more tumor-infiltrating CD8⁺ T cells compared with both high TP53 VAF and TP53-wild type.

Conclusions

TP53 VAF should also be considered when using TP53 as a predictive biomarker. Only low TP53 VAF is independently associated with better efficacy of anti–PD-(L)1 monotherapy, which may result from higher PD-L1 expression and more tumor-infiltrating CD8⁺ T cells.