e16187 Background: Bile tract cancers are genetically and clinically heterogenous with a poor prognosis. Identifying novel biomarkers for targeted therapy is required to improve the clinical outcome of bile tract cancer patients. Methods: Tumor tissue samples of 482 Chinese biliary tract cancer (BTC) patients were genetically profiled using targeted next generation sequencing. Tumor mutation burden (TMB) was calculated by counting all nonsynonymous mutations per megabase of coding sequences. The R package ReactomePA was used in pathway enrichment analysis. Genomic instability was characterized by an in-house developed NGS-based Homologous Recombination Deficiency (HRD) panel and a HRD score was an unweighted sum of loss of heterozygosity (LOH), telomeric allelic imbalance (TAI), and large-scale state transitions (LST) scores. Results: The BTC cohort consisted of 135 gallbladder cancer (GBC), 73 intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma (iCCA), 18 distal cholangiocarcinoma (dCCA), 14 perihilar cholangiocarcinoma (pCCA), while the remaining 242 BTC patients of no specific subtype information. Most frequently mutated genes included TP53 (56%), KRAS (25%), ARID1A (17%), SMAD4 (11%), and CDKN2A (10%) . A preliminary pathway analysis revealed that mutations of DNA damage repair (DDR) pathway genes were enriched in the cohort ( p< 1e-10), accounting for over 70% of the patients, particularly in homologous recombination repair (HRR), Fanconi anemia (FA), mismatch repair (MMR), and base excision repair (BER) genes. More specifically, approximately 50% of the cohort carried at least one mutation of the HRR genes (43%) or MMR genes (14%). Patients with impaired MMR had increased microsatellite instability status (MSI) comparing to those with wildtype MMR (33% vs. 3.1%, p< 0.0001), and patients harboring HRR mutations demonstrated elevated genomic instability than those without such mutations (median HRD: 18 vs.14, p < 0.05), indicative of potential response to poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) inhibitors and other DNA-damage agents. Furthermore, high TMB was found to be highly correlated with DDR gene alterations ( p =0.004). In addition, we observed higher mutation frequencies of BRCA1/2 genes (including somatic and germline) in GBCs in contrast to other BTC subtypes. Conclusions: We herein reported the genomic features of 482 Chinese BTC samples and highlighted the role of DDR pathways including HRR and MMR. These findings could be useful to establish treatment and diagnostic strategies for BTC patients based on genetic information.
Significance of inflammatory and nutritional markers as prognostic predictors in resected cases of distal cholangiocarcinoma
