Association of High Tumor Mutation Burden in Non–Small Cell Lung Cancers With Increased Immune Infiltration and Improved Clinical Outcomes of PD-L1 Blockade Across PD-L1 Expression Levels

Abstract

ImportanceAlthough tumor mutation burden (TMB) has been explored as a potential biomarker of immunotherapy efficacy in solid tumors, there still is a lack of consensus about the optimal TMB threshold that best discriminates improved outcomes of immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy among patients with non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).ObjectivesTo determine the association between increasing TMB levels and immunotherapy efficacy across clinically relevant programmed death ligand–1 (PD-L1) levels in patients with NSCLC.Design, Setting, and ParticipantsThis multicenter cohort study included patients with advanced NSCLC treated with immunotherapy who received programmed cell death–1 (PD-1) or PD-L1 inhibition in the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI), Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC), and in the Stand Up To Cancer (SU2C)/Mark Foundation data sets. Clinicopathological and genomic data were collected from patients between September 2013 and September 2020. Data analysis was performed from November 2021 to February 2022.ExposuresTreatment with PD-1/PD-L1 inhibition without chemotherapy.Main Outcomes and MeasuresAssociation of TMB levels with objective response rate (ORR), progression-free survival (PFS), and overall survival (OS).ResultsIn the entire cohort of 1552 patients with advanced NSCLC who received PD-1/PD-L1 blockade, the median (range) age was 66 (22-92) years, 830 (53.5%) were women, and 1347 (86.8%) had cancer with nonsquamous histologic profile. A regression tree modeling ORR as a function of TMB identified 2 TMB groupings in the discovery cohort (MSKCC), defined as low TMB (≤19.0 mutations per megabase) and high TMB (>19.0 mutations per megabase), which were associated with increasing improvements in ORR, PFS, and OS in the discovery cohort and in 2 independent cohorts (DFCI and SU2C/Mark Foundation). These TMB levels also were associated with significant improvements in outcomes of immunotherapy in each PD-L1 tumor proportion score subgroup of less than 1%, 1% to 49%, and 50% or higher. The ORR to PD-1/PD-L1 inhibition was as high as 57% in patients with high TMB and PD-L1 expression 50% or higher and as low as 8.7% in patients with low TMB and PD-L1 expression less than 1%. Multiplexed immunofluorescence and transcriptomic profiling revealed that high TMB levels were associated with increased CD8-positive, PD-L1–positive T-cell infiltration, increased PD-L1 expression on tumor and immune cells, and upregulation of innate and adaptive immune response signatures.Conclusions and RelevanceThese findings suggest that increasing TMB levels are associated with immune cell infiltration and an inflammatory T-cell–mediated response, resulting in increased sensitivity to PD-1/PD-L1 blockade in NSCLC across PD-L1 expression subgroups.