Association between body mass index, dosing strategy, and efficacy of immune checkpoint inhibitors
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von Itzstein, Mitchell S
Sheffield, Thomas
Khan, Shaheen
Fattah, Farjana
Park, Jason Y
Popat, Vinita
Saltarski, Jessica M
Gloria-McCutchen, Yvonne
Hsiehchen, David
Ostmeyer, Jared
Khan, Saad A
Sultana, Nazima
Xie, Yang
Li, Quan-Zhen
Wakeland, Edward K
Gerber, David E
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Abstract
BACKGROUND: Increased body mass index (BMI) has been associated with improved response to immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) in multiple cancer types. We evaluated associations between BMI, ICI dosing strategy, and clinical outcomes. METHODS: We abstracted clinical data on patients with cancer treated with ICI, including age, sex, cancer type, BMI, ICI type, dosing strategy (weight-based or fixed), radiographic response, overall survival (OS), and progression-free survival (PFS). We compared clinical outcomes between low-BMI and high-BMI populations using Kaplan-Meier curves, Cox regressions, and Pearson product-moment correlation coefficients. RESULTS: A total of 297 patients were enrolled, of whom 40% were women and 59% were overweight (BMI≥25). Of these, 204 (69%) received fixed and 93 (31%) received weight-based ICI dosing. In the overall cohort, overweight BMI was associated with improved PFS (HR 0.69; 95% CI 0.51 to 0.94; p=0.02) and had a trend toward improved OS (HR 0.77; 95% CI 0.57 to 1.04; p=0.08). For both endpoints, improved outcomes in the overweight population were limited to patients who received weight-based ICI dosing (PFS HR 0.53; p=0.04 for weight-based; vs HR 0.79; p=0.2 for fixed dosing) (OS HR 0.56; p=0.03 for weight-based; vs HR 0.89; p=0.54 for fixed dosing). In multivariable analysis, BMI was not associated with PFS or OS. However, the interaction of BMI≥25 and weight-based dosing had a trend toward association with PFS (HR 0.53; 95% CI 0.26 to 1.10; p=0.09) and was associated with OS (HR 0.50; 95% CI 0.25 to 0.99; p=0.05). Patients with BMI<25 tended to have better outcomes with fixed-dose compared with weight-based ICI, while patients with BMI≥25 tended to have better outcomes with weight-based ICI, although these differences did not achieve statistical significance. There was no association between radiographic response and BMI with fixed-dose ICI (p=0.97), but a near-significant trend with weight-based ICI (p=0.1). In subset analyses, the association between BMI, ICI dosing strategy, and clinical outcomes appeared limited to men. CONCLUSIONS: The clinical benefit of ICI in high-BMI populations appears limited to individuals receiving weight-based ICI dosing. Further research into optimal ICI dosing strategies may be warranted.
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Journal for ImmunoTherapy of Cancer
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9
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6
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© Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2021. This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited, appropriate credit is given, any changes made indicated, and the use is non-commercial. See http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.
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Clinical sciences
Oncology and carcinogenesis
Th1-Th2 balance
immunotherapy
obesity
programmed cell death 1 receptor
tumor
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Ahmed, M; von Itzstein, MS; Sheffield, T; Khan, S; Fattah, F; Park, JY; Popat, V; Saltarski, JM; Gloria-McCutchen, Y; Hsiehchen, D; Ostmeyer, J; Khan, SA; Sultana, N; Xie, Y; Li, Q-Z; Wakeland, EK; Gerber, DE, Association between body mass index, dosing strategy, and efficacy of immune checkpoint inhibitors, Journal for ImmunoTherapy of Cancer, 2021, 9 (6), pp. e002349