Blood-based kinase activity profiling: a potential predictor of response to immune checkpoint inhibition in metastatic cancer.

Background: Many cancer patients do not obtain clinical benefit from immune checkpoint inhibition. Checkpoint blockade targets T cells, suggesting that tyrosine kinase activity profiling of baseline peripheral blood mononuclear cells may predict clinical outcome.

Methods: Here a total of 160 patients with advanced melanoma or non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC), treated with anti-cytotoxic T-lymphocyte-associated protein 4 (anti-CTLA-4) or anti-programmed cell death 1 (anti-PD-1), were divided into five discovery and cross-validation cohorts.