Thymic carcinoma is rare and has a poorer prognosis than thymomas. The treatment options are limited after failure of platinum-based chemotherapy. We previously performed a single-center phase II study of pembrolizumab in patients with advanced thymic carcinoma, showing a 22.5% response rate. Here, we characterize the genomic and transcriptomic profile of thymic carcinoma samples from 10 patients (5 non-responders versus 5 responders) in this cohort, with the main aim of identifying potential predictors of response to immunotherapy. We find that expression of PDL1 and alterations in genes or pathways that correlated with PD-L1 expression (CYLD and BAP1) could be potential predictors for response or resistance to immunotherapy in patients with advanced thymic carcinoma. Our study provides insights into potential predictive markers/pathways to select patients with thymic carcinoma for anti-PD-1 immunotherapy.
Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT02364076.
Keywords: immune checkpoint inhibitors; predictors of response; thymic carcinoma; whole exome sequencing; whole-transcriptome sequencing.
© 2021 The Author(s).