Prediction of response to neoadjuvant chemo-immunotherapy in patients with esophageal squamous cell carcinoma by a rapid breath test

© 2024. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited..

BACKGROUND: Neoadjuvant chemo-immunotherapy combination has shown remarkable advances in the management of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC). However, the identification of a reliable biomarker for predicting the response to this chemo-immunotherapy regimen remains elusive. While computed tomography (CT) is widely utilized for response evaluation, its inherent limitations in terms of accuracy are well recognized. Therefore, in this study, we present a novel technique to predict the response of ESCC patients before receiving chemo-immunotherapy by testing volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in exhaled breath.

METHODS: This study employed a prospective-specimen-collection, retrospective-blinded-evaluation design. Patients' baseline breath samples were collected and analyzed using high-pressure photon ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry (HPPI-TOFMS). Subsequently, patients were categorized as responders or non-responders based on the evaluation of therapeutic response using pathology (for patients who underwent surgery) or CT images (for patients who did not receive surgery).

RESULTS: A total of 133 patients were included in this study, with 91 responders who achieved either a complete response (CR) or a partial response (PR), and 42 non-responders who had stable disease (SD) or progressive disease (PD). Among 83 participants who underwent both evaluations with CT and pathology, the paired t-test revealed significant differences between the two methods (p < 0.05). For the breath test prediction model using breath test data from all participants, the validation set demonstrated mean area under the curve (AUC) of 0.86 ± 0.06. For 83 patients with pathological reports, the breath test achieved mean AUC of 0.845 ± 0.123.

CONCLUSIONS: Since CT has inherent weakness in hollow organ assessment and no other ideal biomarker has been found, our study provided a noninvasive, feasible, and inexpensive tool that could precisely predict ESCC patients' response to neoadjuvant chemo-immunotherapy combination using breath test based on HPPI-TOFMS.

Medienart:

E-Artikel

Erscheinungsjahr:

2024

Erschienen:

2024

Enthalten in:

Zur Gesamtaufnahme - volume:130

Enthalten in:

British journal of cancer - 130(2024), 4 vom: 03. März, Seite 694-700

Sprache:

Englisch

Beteiligte Personen:

Huang, Qi [VerfasserIn]
Liu, Zheng [VerfasserIn]
Yu, Yipei [VerfasserIn]
Rong, Zhiwei [VerfasserIn]
Wang, Peiyu [VerfasserIn]
Wang, Shaodong [VerfasserIn]
Wu, Hao [VerfasserIn]
Yan, Xiang [VerfasserIn]
Cho, William C [VerfasserIn]
Mu, Teng [VerfasserIn]
Li, Jilun [VerfasserIn]
Zhao, Jia [VerfasserIn]
Qiu, Mantang [VerfasserIn]
Hou, Yan [VerfasserIn]
Li, Xiangnan [VerfasserIn]

Links:

Volltext

Themen:

Biomarkers
Journal Article
Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

Anmerkungen:

Date Completed 21.02.2024

Date Revised 05.03.2024

published: Print-Electronic

Citation Status MEDLINE

doi:

10.1038/s41416-023-02547-w

funding:

Förderinstitution / Projekttitel:

PPN (Katalog-ID):

NLM366682733