1. Population-based Screening for BRAFV600E in Metastatic Colorectal Cancer Reveals Increased Prevalence and Poor Prognosis
- Author
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Benny Johnson, David F. Schaeffer, Laveniya Kugathasan, Kanwal Pratap Singh Raghav, Daniel J. Renouf, Jenny E. Chu, Scott Kopetz, Aly Karsan, Lucas Swanson, Sharlene Gill, Howard John Lim, Jonathan M. Loree, Van K. Morris, and Robert Wolber
- Subjects
0301 basic medicine ,Oncology ,Cancer Research ,Poor prognosis ,education.field_of_study ,medicine.medical_specialty ,Referral ,business.industry ,Colorectal cancer ,Population ,MEDLINE ,medicine.disease ,digestive system diseases ,Confidence interval ,03 medical and health sciences ,030104 developmental biology ,0302 clinical medicine ,030220 oncology & carcinogenesis ,Internal medicine ,Cohort ,Medicine ,Population screening ,business ,education - Abstract
Purpose: BRAF V600E mutations portend poor prognosis in metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC); however, the true prevalence and prognosis are unknown, as unwell patients may not undergo BRAF sequencing. Experimental Design: We reviewed a population-based cohort of 1,898 patients with colorectal cancer that underwent reflexive IHC mismatch repair (MMR) and BRAFV600E testing. Outcomes among IHC-detected BRAFV600E mCRC (BRAFIHC) were compared with patients with next-generation sequencing (NGS)–identified BRAFV600E-mutated mCRC from two institutions (BRAFNGS) with patients spanning from 2004 to 2018. Results: All-stage population prevalence of BRAFV600E was 12.5% (238/1,898) and did not differ between early and metastatic stages (P = 0.094). Prevalence among mCRC was 10.6% (61/575), of whom 51 (83.6%) were referred to oncology and 26 (42.6%) had NGS testing. BRAFIHC had worse median overall survival (mOS) than BRAFNGS [5.5 vs. 20.4 months; HR, 2.90; 95% confidence interval (CI), 1.89–4.45; P < 0.0001], which persisted in multivariate analysis (P < 0.0001). Across a combined NGS and IHC cohort, BRAFV600E tumors with deficient MMR showed worse mOS compared with MMR proficient tumors (8.9 vs. 17.2 months; HR, 1.46; 95% CI, 0.96–2.27; P = 0.043). In this combined cohort, first-line progression-free survival was 5.9 months, with minimal differences between regimens. Within the population-based cohort, attrition between treatment lines was high with only 60.7% receiving first-line chemotherapy and 26.2% receiving second line. Conclusions: Patients with BRAFV600E-mutated mCRC have a worse prognosis than previously suggested, potentially arising from referral bias for testing. High attrition between lines of therapy suggests efficacious therapies need to be prioritized early for patients to benefit.
- Published
- 2020