A tumor vasculature-based imaging biomarker for predicting response and survival in patients with lung cancer treated with checkpoint inhibitors. Academic Article uri icon

Overview

abstract

  • Tumor vasculature is a key component of the tumor microenvironment that can influence tumor behavior and therapeutic resistance. We present a new imaging biomarker, quantitative vessel tortuosity (QVT), and evaluate its association with response and survival in patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) treated with immune checkpoint inhibitor (ICI) therapies. A total of 507 cases were used to evaluate different aspects of the QVT biomarkers. QVT features were extracted from computed tomography imaging of patients before and after ICI therapy to capture the tortuosity, curvature, density, and branching statistics of the nodule vasculature. Our results showed that QVT features were prognostic of OS (HR = 3.14, 0.95% CI = 1.2 to 9.68, P = 0.0006, C-index = 0.61) and could predict ICI response with AUCs of 0.66, 0.61, and 0.67 on three validation sets. Our study shows that QVT imaging biomarker could potentially aid in predicting and monitoring response to ICI in patients with NSCLC.

publication date

  • November 25, 2022

Identity

PubMed Central ID

  • PMC9699671

Scopus Document Identifier

  • 85142940666

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

  • 10.1101/190561

PubMed ID

  • 36427313

Additional Document Info

volume

  • 8

issue

  • 47