Systemic immune index predicts tumor-infiltrating lymphocyte intensity and immunotherapy response in small cell lung cancer.

Background: Despite recent progresses in immune checkpoint blockade (ICB) in small-cell lung cancer (SCLC), a lack of understanding regarding the systemic tumor immune environment (STIE) and local tumor immune microenvironment (TIME) makes it difficult to accurately predict clinical outcomes and identify potential beneficiaries from ICB therapy.

Methods: We enrolled 191 patients with stage I-III SCLC and comprehensively evaluated the prognostic role of STIE by several quantitative measurements, and further integrate it with a local immune score system (LISS) established by eXtreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost) machine learning algorithm. We also test the value of STIE in beneficiary selection in our independent advanced SCLC cohort receiving programmed cell death 1 ligand 1 (PD-L1) blockade therapy.

Results: Among several systemic immune markers, the STIE as assessed by prognostic nutritional index (PNI) was correlated with disease-free survival (DFS) and overall survival (OS), and remained as an independent prognostic factor for SCLC patients [hazard ratio (HR): 0.473, 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.241-0.929, P=0.030]. Higher PNI score was closely associated with inflamed SCLC molecular subtype and local tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs). We further constructed a LISS which combined top three important local immune biomarkers (CD8 T-cell count, PD-L1 expression on CD8 T-cell and CD4 T-cell count) and integrated it with the PNI score. The final integrated immune risk system was an independent prognostic factor and achieved better predictive performance than Tumor Node Metastasis (TNM) stages and single immune biomarker. Furthermore, PNI-high extensive-stage SCLC patients achieved better clinical response and longer progression-free survival (PFS) (11.8 5.9 months, P=0.012) from PD-L1 blockade therapy.

Conclusions: This study provides a method to investigate the prognostic value of overall immune status by combining the PNI with local immune biomarkers in SCLC. The promising clinical application of PNI in efficacy prediction and beneficiary selection for SCLC immunotherapy is also highlighted.