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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Immunol.
Sec. Cancer Immunity and Immunotherapy
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2024.1470555
This article is part of the Research Topic Clinical Implementation of Precision Oncology Data to Direct Individualized and Immunotherapy-Based Treatment Strategies View all 10 articles

Assessing Immunotherapy Response: Going Beyond RECIST by Integrating Early Tumor Growth Kinetics

Provisionally accepted
Mehdi FELFLI Mehdi FELFLI 1*Antoine IANNESSI Antoine IANNESSI 1,2Alexandre THINNES Alexandre THINNES 1Sebastien Jacques JACQUES Sebastien Jacques JACQUES 1Yan LIU Yan LIU 1
  • 1 Median Technologies, Valbonne, France
  • 2 Centre Antoine Lacassagne, Nice, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, France

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Assess the contribution of early tumor growth dynamics modeling to predict clinical outcomes in non-small cell lung cancer patients receiving immunotherapy, alongside standard RECIST 1.1 criteria.Our retrospective studies used data from 861 patients with advanced NSCLC enrolled in three randomized Phase III trials evaluating immunotherapy plus chemotherapy were analyzed. Tumor size measurements up to 12 two follow-up time points weeks were used to fit a novel Gompertz model and estimate growth rate (GR) and kinetic parameters and kinetic parameters representing depth of response (A), speed of response (B), and long-term modulation (M).A, B, and M. Correlations between these early tumor growth parameters and clinical outcomes such as progression-free survival (PFS) and time to response (TTR) were assessed. Descriptive and discriminative analyses were performed to delineate tumor growth dynamics across various response profiles based on RECIST 1.1 criteria.The novel Gompertz model accurately described early tumor growth kinetics in 861 non-small cell lung cancer patients treated with immunotherapy. Lower growth rate (GR) and model parameter M were associated with longer progression-free survival (PFS) (HR=0.897 and 7.47x10^-7, respectively). Higher GR and parameter A correlated with shorter time to response (HR=0.575 and 0.696, respectively). Responders had significantly lower A (p=1.51e-53) and higher GR (p=0.4e-12) than non-responders. Non-durable stable disease patients had higher GR (p=0.0001) and parameter B (p=0.0002) compared to late responders. Early tumor growth parameters showed potential for predicting long-term outcomes and treatment response patterns.

    Keywords: growth rate, Non-small cell lung cancer, Immunotherapy, RECIST 1.1, novel Gompertz model, Progression-free survival, time to response, Treatment response patterns

    Received: 25 Jul 2024; Accepted: 25 Nov 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 FELFLI, IANNESSI, THINNES, JACQUES and LIU. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Mehdi FELFLI, Median Technologies, Valbonne, France

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.