Blood Cell Count Biomarkers Predicting Efficacy of Pembrolizumab as Second-line Therapy for Advanced Urothelial Carcinoma
Yoshifumi Kadono, Shohei Kawaguchi, Takahiro Nohara, Kazuyoshi Shigehara, Kouji Izumi, Taiki Kamijima, Chikashi Seto, AKINOBU TAKANO, SATOSHI YOTSUYANAGI, Ryunosuke Nakagawa, Tohru Miyagi, Shuhei Aoyama, Hideki Asahi, Rie Fukuda, Atsushi Mizokami
Abstract
BACKGROUND/AIM: To investigate the blood markers for predicting pembrolizumab efficacy in advanced urothelial carcinoma (UC). PATIENTS AND METHODS: This study included 91 advanced UC patients. The relationship between prognosis and markers from peripheral blood cell counts, including the neutrophil-lymphocyte ratio (NLR), platelet-lymphocyte ratio (PLR), monocyte-lymphocyte ratio (MLR), and systemic inflammation response index (SIRI=monocytes × neutrophils/lymphocytes), was evaluated. RESULTS: Multivariate analysis indicated that pretreatment NLR and the 1-month-change NLR were both significantly associated with overall survival (OS) after pembrolizumab initiation. When the patients were divided into four groups according to calculated cutoffs using Cox proportional hazard model, the pretreatment NLR <2.9 and 1-month change NLR <+43% groups had a significantly better OS than the pretreatment NLR ≥2.9 and 1-month-change NLR ≥+43% groups. CONCLUSION: NLR, MLR, PLR and SIRI before pembrolizumab and 1-month-change NLR in advanced UC correlated with OS after pembrolizumab treatment.