Background: To investigate the role of pretreatment lung immune prognostic index (LIPI) as biomarker in PD-L1 ≥50% non-small-cell lung cancer patients receiving pembrolizumab. Patients & methods: We retrospectively identified 117 patients, divided into three prognostic groups according to LIPI score. For each patient, we evaluated 1-year overall survival (OS) and progression-free survival rate. C-statistic and survival receiver operating characteristic curves were used to study discrimination of LIPI. Results: After a median follow-up of 11.7 months, 1-year OS rate was 60.1%, 35.3% and 28.6%, while 1-year progression-free survival rate was 39.1%, 20.6% and 14.3% in good, intermediate and poor LIPI groups, respectively (p < 0.001). The c-statistic and area under the curve of LIPI were 0.63 and 0.662 for OS and 1-year OS, respectively. Conclusions: Higher LIPI score is related to worse survival in advanced non-small-cell lung cancer patients treated with first-line pembrolizumab. However, based on c-statistic and area under the curve, LIPI does not represent a good prognostic survival model.
Keywords: LDH; biomarker; derived neutrophils-to-lymphocyte ratio; lung immune prognostic index; non-small cell lung cancer; pembrolizumab; predictive; prognostic.
Lay abstract In recent years, immunotherapy has become a milestone in the treatment of non-small-cell lung cancer, but clinicians need clinical and/or laboratory factors able to predict the benefit of immunotherapy. Therefore, we investigated the role of pretreatment lung immune prognostic index (LIPI) as biomarker in advanced non-small-cell lung cancer patients with high PD-L1 expression levels and receiving pembrolizumab as first line. We retrospectively identified 117 patients divided into three prognostic groups (good, intermediate and poor) according to LIPI score. We found that patients belonging to good prognostic group (LIPI score 0) lived longer and responded better than those of intermediate and poor prognostic groups (LIPI score 1 or 2), confirming the correlation between LIPI score and survival and response outcomes.