According to a study result, effective immunotherapy treatment is possible by using the ‘Tumor Mutation Burden (TMB)’ test in the treatment of metastatic gastric cancer. Accordingly, patients with metastatic gastric cancer are expected to receive customized treatment through the TMB test just like other cancer patients.
Immunotherapy has fewer side effects, and the therapeutic performance can be predicted more precisely by using the TMB value.
A research team led by Professor Geun-wook Lee of the Department of Hematology and Oncology at Seoul National University Bundang Hospital conducted a study on patients with metastatic gastric cancer who had not received treatment before and announced these results. This study was conducted together with the study (KEYNOTE-062 phase 3 clinical trial) to compare the effects of immunotherapy and cytotoxic cancer treatment.
As a result of the study, in patients with high TMB values (TMB≥10), immunotherapy was better than cytotoxic chemotherapy in various fields such as tumor response rate and survival period, but patients with low TMB values (TMB ≥10)
This study is meaningful in that it extends the usefulness of TMB for the prediction of immunotherapy efficacy to the treatment of metastatic gastric cancer. Previously, the efficacy of immunotherapy was predicted to some extent by using the ‘PD-L1 expression level’ and ‘Microsatellite Instability (MSI)’ tests in gastric cancer tissue. This means that the scientific basis for implementation has been established.
Professor Lee Geun-wook said, “Through this study, we confirmed that TMB is a biomarker that can predict the efficacy of immunotherapy in metastatic gastric cancer like other tumors. It will enable more effective chemotherapy.”
Meanwhile, this study was published in the overseas academic journal ‘Clinical Cancer Research’.