High response rate and durability driven by HLA genetic diversity in kidney cancer patients treated with the immunotherapy combination lenvatinib and pembrolizumab.

Immune checkpoint blockade (ICB) therapy has substantially improved the outcomes of patients with many types of cancers, including renal cell carcinoma (RCC). Initially studied as monotherapy, immunotherapy-based combination regimens have improved the clinical benefit achieved by ICB monotherapy and have revolutionized RCC treatment. While biomarkers like PD-L1 and tumor mutation burden are FDA-approved as biomarkers for ICB monotherapy, there are no known biomarkers for combination immunotherapies. Here, we describe the clinical outcomes and genomic determinants of response from a phase 1b/2 clinical trial on advanced RCC patients evaluating the efficacy of lenvatinib, a multi-kinase inhibitor mainly targeting vascular endothelial growth factor receptor (VEGFR) and fibroblast growth factor receptor (FGFR) plus pembrolizumab, an anti-PD1 immunotherapy. Concurrent treatment with lenvatinib and pembrolizumab resulted in an objective response rate of 79% (19/24) and tumor shrinkage in 96% (23/24) of patients. While tumor mutational burden (TMB) did not predict for clinical benefit, germline HLA-I diversity strongly impacted treatment efficacy. Specifically, HLA-I evolutionary divergence (HED), which measures the breadth of a patient's immunopeptidome, was associated with both improved clinical benefit and durability of response. Our results identify lenvatinib plus pembrolizumab as a highly active treatment strategy in RCC and reveal HLA-I diversity as a critical determinant of efficacy for this combination. HED also predicted better survival in a separate cohort of RCC patients following therapy with anti-PD-1-based combination therapy. Implications: These findings have substantial implications for RCC therapy and for understanding immunogenetic mechanisms of efficacy and warrants further investigation.

Molecular cancer research : MCR. 2021 May 26 [Epub ahead of print]

Chung-Han Lee, Renzo G DiNatale, Diego Chowell, Chirag Krishna, Vladimir Makarov, Cristina Valero, Lynda Vuong, Mark Lee, Kate Weiss, Doug Hoen, Luc Morris, Ed Reznik, Samuel Murray, Ritesh Kotecha, Martin H Voss, Maria I Carlo, Darren Feldman, Pallavi Sachdev, Yusuke Adachi, Yukinori Minoshima, Junji Matsui, Yasuhiro Funahashi, Kenichi Nomoto, A Ari Hakimi, Robert J Motzer, Timothy A Chan

Genitourinary Oncology Service, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center., Surgery - Urology Service, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center., Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center., CITI, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center., Surgery, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center., Immunogenomics and Precision Oncology Platform, MSKCC., Human Oncology and Pathogenesis Program, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center., Department of Surgery, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center., Computational Oncology, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center., Department of Medicine, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center., GU oncology, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center., Medicine, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center., Oncology, Eisai, Inc., Tsukuba Research Laboratories, Eisai Co., Ltd., Oncology Business Group, Eisai.Co.,Ltd., Oncology, Eisai Inc., Center for Immunotherapy, Cleveland Clinic .