Ovarian cancer (OC) is the most common cause of gynecologic cancer mortality worldwide. Next generation sequencing (NGS) provides molecular biomarkers which can potentially predict oncological outcomes. We performed a retrospective study to examine progonostic biomarkes for ovarian cancer patients treated in our institution.
We retrospectively evaluated demographic and clinical information of OC patients referred for NGS molecular testing between 2011-2020 at the Tel-Aviv Medical Center. Cox models were used to analyze the clinical impact of molecular biomarkers including LOH and TMB by assessing overall survival (OS) and progression free survival (PFS).
Of 1026 consecutive patients reviewed, 946 were included in the analysis: 108 (11.4%) were referred to NGS and 838 (88.6%) served as control. Patient baseline parameters were similar between the groups. High loss of heterozygosity (LOH) was associated with longer mOS (99.0 vs. 48.2 months, p=0.004). Sixty-six patients had information on TMB status: 75.8% (50/66) had low TMB status (<5) and 24.2% (16/66) had intermediate TMB status (5-15). None had a high TMB status. Analysis of TMB using the Breslow test showed that patients with TMB ≥4 had a statistically significant longer OS compared with patients with TMB<4 (92.8 months [95%CI, 47.1-138.6] vs. 52.77 months [95% CI, 26.4-79.2], p=0.026).
We identified LOH and TMB ≥4 as strong prognostic biomarkers among OC patients. Prospective studies evaluating larger cohorts are necessary to generate a more extensive evaluation of additional prognostic and predictive biomarkers.
The authors.
Roche Israel.
All authors have declared no conflicts of interest.