Overexpression of excision repair cross-complementing 1 gene associates with higher risk of therapeutic failure after definitive chemoradiation for unresectable non-small cell lung cancer.

Background: Locally advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is typically treated with concurrent chemoradiation (CRT). Excision Repair Cross-Complementing 1 (ERCC1) is a protein involved in DNA damage repair. The objective of this study was to assess whether higher tumoral ERCC1 expression would associate with worse clinical outcomes in NSCLC treated with CRT.

Methods: Twenty-five patients were included. Relative expression levels of messenger RNA (mRNA) for ERCC1 were measured with a quantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) and expressed as scaled ERCC1 mRNA gene expression value. Patients were followed every 3 months with history, physical exam, and imaging to assess clinical outcomes. We evaluated the associations between ERCC1, as well as other prognostic variables including stage, age, gender, race, histology, RT dose, performance status, and progression free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS) with Kaplan-Meier method and Cox regression.

Results: Recursive partitioning analysis identified a GeneExp cutoff of 1.54. Higher ERCC1 expression was associated with worse PFS [hazard ratio (HR) =1.70, P=0.04] and trended towards worse OS (HR =1.53, P=0.11). Increasing tumor volume (HR =1.001, P=0.055), squamous cell (HR =7.86, P=0.008) and poorly differentiated histology (HR =5.25, P=0.06) also associated with worse OS. The cumulative incidence of local recurrence at 1 year trended higher with ERCC1 GeneExp ≥1.54 (78.1%) compared to ERCC1 GeneExp <1.54 (14.9%, P=0.08). Distant relapse at 1 year was 72% with tumor ERCC1 expression ≥1.54 and 52% with ERCC1 expression <1.54 (P=0.28).

Conclusions: Higher ERCC1 expression by qRT-PCR appears to correlate with worse PFS in locally advanced NSCLC treated with CRT. However, the overall sample size of the population was small; thus, larger studies are warranted to integrate molecular biomarkers to identify patients who might benefit from treatment intensification.