Researchers have created an ‘electronic nose’ that can effectively predict individual patient responses to immunotherapy, it was announced today.
They hope this could avoid treatment to patients with non-small-cell lung cancer who are unlikely to benefit.
The researchers looked at ways of predicting a patient’s response to immune checkpoint inhibitors, which have improved survival from this disease but only work for about a fifth of patients.
“Biomarkers are needed that accurately predict response,” say Professor Michel van den Heuvel of the Radboud University Medical Centre, the Netherlands, and colleagues in Annals of Oncology today (18 September).
They looked at the possibility of testing exhaled breath for certain molecules that indicate inflammation linked to the patient’s response to therapy.
In this study, the treatments given to the 143 patients were forms of anti25 programmed death ligand 1 (PD-1) therapy – nivolumab or pembrolizumab.
Breath was tested with a metal oxide semiconductor electronic nose (eNose) on a device normally used to measure airflow. Response to treatment was measured after three months.
“ENose sensors contributed significantly at baseline in differentiating between patients with different responses at three months of anti35 PD-1 treatment,” the authors report.
They then combined the eNose sensors into a single biomarker which was confirmed as accurate in further testing.
“This finding can potentially avoid application of ineffective treatment in identified probable nonresponders,” they conclude.
Joint first author Ms Rianne de Vries commented: “The measurement takes less than a minute, and the results are compared to an online database where machine-learning algorithms immediately identify whether or not the patient is likely to respond to anti-PD1 therapy.”
R. de Vries, et al. Prediction of response to anti-PD-1 therapy in patients with non-small-cell lung cancer by electronic nose analysis of exhaled breath. Annals of Oncology 18 September 2019
https://academic.oup.com/annonc/article-lookup/doi/10.1093/annonc/mdz279
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