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Although immunotherapy can offer profound clinical benefit for patients with a variety of difficult-to-treat cancers, many tumors either do not respond to upfront treatment with immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) or progressive/recurrent disease occurs after an interval of initial control. Improved response rates have been demonstrated with the addition of ICIs to cytotoxic therapies, leading to approvals from the US Food and Drug Administration and regulatory agencies in other countries for ICI−chemotherapy combinations in a number of solid tumor indications, including breast, head and neck, gastric, and lung cancer. Designing trials for patients with tumors that do not respond or stop responding to treatment with immunotherapy combinations, however, is challenging without uniform definitions of resistance. Previously, the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) published consensus definitions for resistance to single-agent anti-programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1). To provide guidance for clinical trial design and to support analyses of emerging molecular and cellular data surrounding mechanisms of resistance to ICI-based combinations, SITC convened a follow-up workshop in 2021 to develop consensus definitions for resistance to multiagent ICI combinations. This manuscript reports the consensus clinical definitions for combinations of ICIs and chemotherapies. Definitions for resistance to ICIs in combination with targeted therapies and with other ICIs will be published in companion volumes to this paper.

BackgroundTo characterize genomic determinants of response to pembrolizumab in recurrent/metastatic (R/M) head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) in the KEYNOTE-012 study.MethodsAssociations between biomarkers (tumor mutational burden (TMB), neoantigen load (NL), 18-gene T-cell-inflamed gene expression profile (TcellinfGEP), and PD-L1 combined positive score (CPS)) and clinical outcomes with pembrolizumab were assessed in patients with R/M HNSCC (n=192). Tumor human papillomavirus (HPV) status was also evaluated with the use of p16 immunohistochemistry and whole exome sequencing (WES; HPV+, mapping >20 HPV reads) in pretreatment tumor samples (n=106).ResultsTMB, clonality-weighted TMB, and TcellinfGEP were significantly associated with objective response (p=0.0276, p=0.0201, and p=0.006, respectively), and a positive trend was observed between NL and PD-L1 CPS and clinical response (p=0.0550 and p=0.0682, respectively). No correlation was observed between TMB and TcellinfGEP (Spearman ρ=–0.026) or TMB and PD-L1 (Spearman ρ=0.009); a correlation was observed between TcellinfGEP and PD-L1 (Spearman ρ=0.511). HPV status by WES and p16 immunohistochemistry showed concordance (84% ҡ=0.573) among patients whose HPV results were available using both methods.ConclusionsTMB and inflammatory biomarkers (TcellinfGEP and PD-L1) may represent distinct and complementary biomarkers predicting response to anti-programmed death 1 therapies in HNSCC; further study of these relationships in randomized clinical trials is needed.Trial registration numberNCT01848834.

BackgroundProgrammed cell death protein 1 (PD-1) inhibitors as monotherapy or in combination with chemotherapy have become a standard of care first-line therapy for Stage IIIB/IV non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). However, many patients experience disease progression and require subsequent therapy within the first year of treatment.1 For patients requiring salvage chemotherapy, prognosis is poor, with a median progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS) of 4.0 and 8.5 months, respectively.2 Combinations of PD-1 blockade using sasanlimab (PF-06801591) and other immune and/or targeted therapies may be able to achieve clinical response in patients who have progressed on standard chemoimmunotherapy.MethodsLANDSCAPE 1011 (NCT04585815) is a prospective, open-label, multi-center, parallel group, phase 1b/2 umbrella study evaluating the safety, efficacy, pharmacokinetics, and pharmacodynamics of sasanlimab in combination with other therapies, in patients with Stage IIIB/IV NSCLC. The study is expected to enrol ~375 patients age 18 years or older diagnosed with stage IIIB/IV NSCLC. During phase 1b, the safety of each sub-study combination with subcutaneous sasanlimab will be assessed and the recommended phase 2 dose determined for each combination. Phase 2 will further evaluate safety and anti-tumor activity of each combination using the respective recommended phase 2 dose (figure 1). Up to 5 parallel sub-studies are planned. Currently, 2 sub-studies are ongoing. Sub-Study A will investigate sasanlimab, encorafenib (a BRAF inhibitor), and binimetinib (a MEK inhibitor) in patients with BRAF^V600E mutations (only including treatment-naïve patients in phase 2). Sub-Study B will investigate sasanlimab, axitinib (a vascular endothelial growth factor receptor inhibitor), and SEA-TGT (an anti-TIGIT antibody). In phase 2, this will involve treatment-naïve patients without oncogene drivers who have PD ligand 1-positive tumors or whose disease has progressed on prior immune checkpoint inhibitor-containing regimens. The primary phase 1b endpoint is the dose-limiting toxicity during the first cycle (28 days). The primary phase 2 endpoint in Sub-Study A is durable objective response (OR) defined as confirmed complete response or partial response lasting 10 or more months; and in Sub-Study B, OR defined as confirmed complete response or partial response, according to Response Evaluation Criteria in Solid Tumors (RECIST) v1.1. Secondary endpoints include adverse events and laboratory abnormalities, duration of response, time to tumor response, PFS, OS, OR by PD-L1 expression at baseline, pharmacokinetic parameters, incidence of anti-drug antibodies and neutralizing antibodies, and health-related quality of life. The first patient was enrolled in November 2020.Abstract 456 Figure 1LANDSCAPE 1011 study overviewAcknowledgementsThis study was sponsored by Pfizer. Medical writing and editorial support was provided by Simon Stones at Engage Scientific Solutions, and funded by Pfizer. The authors would like to acknowledge the late Aron Thall, who was highly devoted to the execution and success of this study.Trial RegistrationClinicalTrials.gov NCT04585815ReferencesGandhi L, Rodriguez-Abreu D, Gadgeel S, et al. Pembrolizumab plus Chemotherapy in Metastatic Non-Small-Cell Lung Cancer. N Engl J Med 2018;378:2078–92.Herbst RS, Baas P, Kim DW, et al. Pembrolizumab versus docetaxel for previously treated, PD-L1-positive, advanced non-small-cell lung cancer (KEYNOTE-010): a randomised controlled trial. Lancet 2016;387:1540–50.Ethics ApprovalThe study is approved at each study site according to local regulations.

Background Low absolute lymphocyte count (ALC) has previously been established as a marker of poor prognosis in multiple cancer types. There is growing evidence that ALC may also be associated with response to immunotherapy. This study explores whether response to PD1 inhibitors in recurrent and/or metastatic head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (R/M HNSCC) is associated with pretreatment ALC. Methods Thirty-four R/M HNSCC patients who received either nivolumab or pembrolizumab between January 2014 and May 2018 at Johns Hopkins were identified retrospectively. Pretreatment blood counts in patients with and without clinical benefit from PD1 inhibitors were compared. Time-to-progression analyses were performed by dichotomizing the study cohort with the threshold of ALC 600 cells/μl, which is approximately 1.5 standard deviations away from treatment-naïve baseline mean. Results Patients with lower ALC appeared to have significantly less clinical benefit from anti-PD1 therapy. Those patients with pretreatment ALC

Background Advances in cancer immunotherapy have generated encouraging results in multiple malignancies refractory to standard chemotherapies. As the use of immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICI) proliferates, the incidence of autoimmune side effects associated with these agents, termed immune related adverse events (irAE), is expected to increase. The frequency of significant irAE in ICI treated patients is about 10–20% and early recognition is critical to prevent serious morbidity and even mortality. New onset autoimmune diabetes mellitus (DM) associated with immune checkpoint inhibitor treatment is extremely rare, occurring in less than 1% of patients. Autoimmune DM often presents as diabetic ketoacidosis, a medical emergency requiring immediate treatment. We describe the first reported case of a patient with lung cancer who developed autoimmune diabetes after nivolumab treatment and was found to have three diabetes related (islet) autoantibodies present before ICI treatment and seroconversion of another after ICI treatment and onset of autoimmune DM. Case Presentation A 34 year old African American woman with metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) was treated with nivolumab in the second line setting after disease progression following standard chemoradiation therapy. After receiving two doses of nivolumab, the patient developed abrupt onset of hyperglycemia and diabetic ketoacidosis. Autoimmune diabetes was diagnosed on the basis of undetectable C-peptide levels, seropositivity of three diabetes related (islet) autoantibodies and absolute insulin dependence. The patient eventually required use of continuous subcutaneous insulin infusion (insulin pump) due to erratic glycemic excursions and multiple readmissions for DKA. Human leucocyte antigen (HLA) genoyping revealed none of the high risk haplotypes associated with the development of type 1 diabetes. Interestingly, a frozen blood sample obtained prior to treatment with nivolumab tested positive for three of the four diabetes related (islet) autoantibodies despite no prior history of diabetes and no family history of diabetes. Notably, at the time of manuscript preparation, the patient is without evidence of NSCLC recurrence with no further treatment since the nivolumab therapy. Conclusion New onset autoimmune diabetes mellitus associated with nivolumab has been described only in case reports and occurs at rates of