Blood Tumor Mutational Burden Alone Is Not a Good Predictive Biomarker for Response to Immune Checkpoint Inhibitors in Patients With Gastrointestinal Tumors

There has been a controversy about the predictive value of tissue-TMB-H for immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) with limited data regarding blood-TMB (bTMB) in GI tumors. We aim to evaluate the predictive value of bTMB compared with MSI-H in GI tumors. Patients with unresectable/metastatic GI cancer, harboring either MSS with bTMB-H (>= 10 mut/Mb) or dMMR/MSI-H who received ICI were included. We compared ICIs' efficacy between MSS-bTMB-H (N=45) versus MSI-H (N=50) in GI tumors. Ninety-five patients were identified with the majority having colorectal (49.5%) or esophagogastric (34.7%) cancers. MSS-bTMB-H group had more esophagogastric cancer and later-line ICI recipients, with no significant differences in other known prognostic variables. At a median follow-up of 9.4 months, MSI-H group showed superior ORR (58.0% vs. 26.7%), DCR (84.0% vs. 42.2%), DoR (not-reached vs. 7.6 mo), PFS (22.5 vs. 3.8 mo), and OS (Not-reached vs. 10.1 mo) compared with MSS-bTMB-H. Multivariable analysis showed that MSI-H was an independent favorable factor over MSS-bTMB-H for PFS (HR=0.31, CI 0.15-0.63, P=0.001) and OS (HR=0.33, CI 0.14-0.80, P=0.014). MSI-H group showed favorable outcomes compared with MSS-bTMB-16+ (ORR: 58.0% vs. 26.9%; DCR: 84.0% vs. 42.3%; PFS:22.5 vs. 4.0 mo) and MSS-bTMB-20+ (ORR: 58.0% vs. 31.6%; DCR: 84.0% vs. 42.1%; PFS:22.5 vs. 3.2 mo). There was no difference between MSS-bTMB10-15 compared with MSS-bTMB-16+ in ORR, DCR, and PFS, or between MSS-bTMB10-19 compared with MSS-bTMB20+. Regardless of bTMB cutoff at 10, 16, or 20, bTMB-H did not appear to be a predictive biomarker in MSS GI tumors in this retrospective analysis.