scholarly journals Comparison of the Diagnostic Performance of Changes in Signal Intensity and Volume From Multiparametric MRI for Assessing Response of Rectal Cancer to Neoadjuvant Chemoradiotherapy

Author(s):  
Zhengwu Tan ◽  
Lan Zhang ◽  
Lan Cheng ◽  
Lingling Xie ◽  
Zhenyu Lin Lin ◽  
...  

Abstract Background: Tumor regression grade (TRG) correlates with prognosis in patients with locally advanced rectal cancer (LARC), but there is controversy regarding the use of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) for determining TRG. This study to evaluate the diagnostic value of change rate in signal intensity (SI) and volume (V) from MRI to TRG following preoperative chemoradiotherapy (CRT) in patiens with LARC.Materials and methods: This retrospective analysis examined 82 LARC patients who were admitted to our institution between Oct 2017 and Oct 2019. Patients underwent pre- and post-CRT T2-weighted (T2W), diffusion-weighted (DW)/apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC), and contrast-enhanced T1-weighted (ceT1W) MRI. Change rate of volume and relative SI ratio(%△V and %△SIR) from each sequence were determined. All LARCs were confirmed pathologically and classified into TRG 0, 1, 2 and 3. Descriptive statistics and receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis, with calculation of area under the curve (AUC), were used to compare the diagnostic performances. Results: Sixteen patients had TRG-0, 15 had TRG-1, 35 had TRG-2, and 16 had TRG-3. Except for ADC-%△SIR, the remaining%△V and %△SIR on T1W, DWI, and ceT1W had significant differences among the four groups. %△V and/or %△SIR did not distinguish TRG-1 from TRG-2 nor TRG-2 from TRG-3, but differences between other TRGs were identified by %△V and/or %△SIR on T2W, DWI, and ceT1W. The combined use of DW-%△V and T2W-%△SIR provided the best diagnostic performance in distinguishing of TRG-0 from TRG-2 (AUC: 0.954) and from TRG-3 (AUC: 1.000).Conclusions: Preoperative MRI of LARC patients can determine TRG and may improve selection of the preoperative therapy.

2019 ◽  
Vol 37 (15_suppl) ◽  
pp. 3569-3569 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jiaolin Zhou ◽  
Guole Lin ◽  
Yuhua Gong ◽  
Yanyan Zhang ◽  
Yan-Fang Guan ◽  
...  

3569 Background: Neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy (nCRT) is nowadays the standard of care for the locally advanced rectal cancer (LARC). However, there is no effective method to predict patients’ possible benefits from nCRT and monitor the response to it. Methods: Patients with locally advanced middle and low rectal cancer of stage cT3-4N0M0 or cTanyN+M0 were enrolled from August 2017 to July 2018. All patients received nCRT with long-term radiation plus fluorouracil based chemotherapy, followed by the radical surgery. Serial plasma samples were collected pre-nCRT, during nCRT, and preoperatively (8 weeks after the completion of nCRT). Somatic mutations were detected with next-generation sequencing using a 1021-gene panel with peripheral blood lymphocyte DNA as a germline control. Results: This prospective cohort study enrolled 61 patients with rectal cancer. The pathological complete response (pCR) rate and the downstage rate was 31% (19/61) and 80% (49/61), respectively. ctDNA was detectable in 77% (47/61), 18% (11/61) and 13% (8/61) of blood samples obtained pre-nCRT, during nCRT and preoperatively, respectively. No significant association was observed between pre-nCRT ctDNA status with any clinicopathological factors, including age, gender, differentiation or tumor circumferential extent. Among the 8 patients with detectable ctDNA preoperatively, pathological tumor regression grade (TRG) of CAP 2-3 were observed and hepatic metastasis was found in 4 patients within 2 months. For patients with undetectable pre-operative ctDNA, a higher proportion archived pathological downstaging (85% vs 50%). The correlation between preoperative ctDNA status and achievement of pathological downstage was independent of age, gender or differentiation (p = 0.02). In addition, preoperative ctDNA positivity was associated with the persistently involved lymph node (p = 0.02). However, neither pre-nCRT nor during-nCRT ctDNA status was associated with pathological downstaging or persistently lymph node involvement. Conclusions: Detectable ctDNA after the completion of nCRT is a predicator of unsatisfactory curative effect of patients with LARC, which might indicate novel treatment intensification studies. Clinical trial information: NCT03042000.


Cancers ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (7) ◽  
pp. 1894 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bianca Petresc ◽  
Andrei Lebovici ◽  
Cosmin Caraiani ◽  
Diana Sorina Feier ◽  
Florin Graur ◽  
...  

Locally advanced rectal cancer (LARC) response to neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy (nCRT) is very heterogeneous and up to 30% of patients are considered non-responders, presenting no tumor regression after nCRT. This study aimed to determine the ability of pre-treatment T2-weighted based radiomics features to predict LARC non-responders. A total of 67 LARC patients who underwent a pre-treatment MRI followed by nCRT and total mesorectal excision were assigned into training (n = 44) and validation (n = 23) groups. In both datasets, the patients were categorized according to the Ryan tumor regression grade (TRG) system into non-responders (TRG = 3) and responders (TRG 1 and 2). We extracted 960 radiomic features/patient from pre-treatment T2-weighted images. After a three-step feature selection process, including LASSO regression analysis, we built a radiomics score with seven radiomics features. This score was significantly higher among non-responders in both training and validation sets (p < 0.001 and p = 0.03) and it showed good predictive performance for LARC non-response, achieving an area under the curve (AUC) = 0.94 (95% CI: 0.82–0.99) in the training set and AUC = 0.80 (95% CI: 0.58–0.94) in the validation group. The multivariate analysis identified the radiomics score as an independent predictor for the tumor non-response (OR = 6.52, 95% CI: 1.87–22.72). Our results indicate that MRI radiomics features could be considered as potential imaging biomarkers for early prediction of LARC non-response to neoadjuvant treatment.


2018 ◽  
Vol 36 (4_suppl) ◽  
pp. 700-700
Author(s):  
Annalisa Milano ◽  
Marina Borro ◽  
Emanuela Pilozzi ◽  
Andrea Montori ◽  
Marco Mazzotta ◽  
...  

700 Background: The standard of care for locally advanced rectal cancer (RC) is neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy (CRT) with 5FU aimed to tumor downstaging prior to radical resection but there is a wide spectrum of responses to it, from none to complete. The aim of this project is to validate top candidate genes previously identified by microarray studies as prognostic and predictive classifiers of locally advanced RC, using the NanoString nCounter Platform. Methods: Two cohorts of RC patients were identified according to tumor regression grade (TRG) of AJCC Staging Manual (7th) system: 1) good prognosis: patients that after neoadjuvant CRT obtained TRG0 (complete response); 2) poor prognosis: patients with TRG1 (moderate response), patients with TRG2 (minimum response rate) and patients with TRG3 (poor response). Pre-treatment biopsies tissues from ten TRG0 patients (ID TRG0bio) and thirteen TRG1-3 patients (ID TRG1-3bio) were macro-dissected from FFPE sections, RNA isolated and used for expression profiling of a 305 genes custom code set consisting of 12 normalizer genes, 101 prognostic genes (markers of stemness, invasiveness, proliferation, drug-resistance), 192 predictive genes (involved in response to 5-FU, to radiation therapy and in the response to CRT). All samples were normalized using the geometric mean of the housekeeper genes. P-values were calculated by student’s t-test and was consider significance if was less than 0.05. Gene-specific RNA expression profiles were compared using Spearman's correlation. The heat map was generated using MeV 4.9.0. Results: When we compared TRG0bio to TRG1-3bio tissues, among the 305 genes assayed, changes in expression levels of 18 genes (SSB, GAPDH, TXNDC9, DUT, PKM, STAT1,SLC28A3, DAG1, TYMS, FERMT1, ARNT,SLC6A6, SMAD3, SCRN1, POU5F1, GNG4, PDRG1, ATP5E) were statistically significant. Conclusions: Results suggest that TRG0 RC is characterized by distinct molecular events compared TRG1-3 disease. Next steps will be: to amplify sample size, to understand signaling pathways of top differentially expressed genes and to validate prospectively our gene signature.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhengwu Tan ◽  
Lan Zhang ◽  
Lan Cheng ◽  
Lingling Xie ◽  
Zhenyu Lin ◽  
...  

Abstract Background: “Wait-and-see”, has been proposed as a possible method of treatment in patients with locally advanced rectal cancer (LARC) after chemoradiotherapy (CRT), MR is important to predict the pathological tumor regression grade(TRG) to preoperative CRT. This study aims to evaluate the diagnostic value of signal intensity (SI) and volume (V) change rate in magnetic resonance imaging (MR) and determine which ones perform best as a potential biomarker for predicting pathological TRG to preoperative CRT in patients with LARC.Methods: A retrospective analysis of 82 patients with LARC, for whom clinical and imaging data were retrieved from our institute was conducted between Oct 2017and Oct 2019. Patients underwent pre- and post-CRT T2-weighted (T2W), diffusion-weighted (DW)/apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) and contrast-enhanced T1-weighted (ceT1W). V, difference of volume between pre-CRT and post-CRT tumor (△V), V of tumor reduction rate (%△V), as well as SI of tumor (SIt), SI of muscle (SIm), relative SI ratio of tumor/muscle (SIR), changed difference SIR between pre- and post-CRT SIR (△SIR), SIR of tumor changed rate (%△SIR) on T2W, ADC and ceT1W were measured. All of LARC after CRT were confirmed pathologically and classifed into histologic TRG: TRG 0 (complete response), TRG 1 (moderate response), TRG 2 (minimal response), TRG 3 (poor response). Descriptive statistics and areas under the receiver operating characteristic curves (ROC) were generated to compare performance of %△V and %△SIR on T2W, DW, ceT1W for distinguishing between different pathological TRG.Result: Of the 82 patients, TRG 0 (16), TRG 1 (15), TRG 2 (35), TRG 3 (16).Except for ADC-%△SIR, the remaining %△V and %△SIR on T1W, ADC/DWI, ceT1W showed statistics significance between four groups. There was not distinguishable between TRG 1 and TRG 2, TRG 2 and TRG 3 by %△V and/ or %△SIR, the remaining different TRG all were identified by %△V and/ or %△SIR on T2W, ADC/DWI, ceT1W. Compared with other individual %△V or %△SIR, the combination of DW-%△V and T2W-%△SIR (DW-%△V * T2W-%△SIR) yielded higher AUCs to predict TRG 0 from TRG 2 (AUCs: 0.954, sensitivity: 93.75%, specificity: 97.14%) and TRG 3 (AUCs: 1.000, sensitivity: 100%, specificity: 100%), although AUC of all had not significant differences between TRG groups. there was statistically significant differences in post-CRT T restage and ypT stage between fours groups, respectively, but the agreement between post-CRT T restage and ypT is low ( kappa=0.191).Conclusions: V and/or SIR change rate on T2W, DW, ceT1W with high diagnostic performance could be useful in differentiating complete response from non-complete response; SIR change rate could be useful for distinguishing between moderate response and poor response.


Cells ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (9) ◽  
pp. 2071
Author(s):  
Jihane Boustani ◽  
Valentin Derangère ◽  
Aurélie Bertaut ◽  
Olivier Adotevi ◽  
Véronique Morgand ◽  
...  

In locally advanced rectal cancer, radiotherapy (RT) followed by surgery have improved locoregional control, but distant recurrences remain frequent. Although checkpoint inhibitors have demonstrated objective response in several cancers, the clinical benefit of PD-1/PD-L1 blockade remains uncertain in rectal cancer. We collected data from biopsies and surgical specimens in 74 patients. The main objective was to evaluate the impact of neoadjuvant RT and fractionation on PD-L1 expression. Secondary objectives were to study the relation between PD-L1 expression and tumor regression grade (TRG), progression-free survival (PFS), overall survival (OS), and CD8 TILs infiltration. Median rates of cells expressing PD-L1 pre- and post-RT were 0.15 (range, 0–17) and 0.5 (range, 0–27.5), respectively (p = 0.0005). There was no effect of RT fractionation on PD-L1+ cell rates. We found no relation between CD8+ TILs infiltration and PD-L1 expression and no difference between high-PD-L1 or low-PD-L1 expression and TRG. High-to-high PD-L1 expression profile had none significant higher OS and PFS compared to all other groups (p = 0.06). Median OS and PFS were higher in biopsies with >0.08 PD-L1+ cells. High-to-high PD-L1 profile and ypT0-2 were significantly associated with higher OS and PFS. This study did not show the differential induction of PD-L1 expression according to fractionation.


2017 ◽  
Vol 2017 ◽  
pp. 1-6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alessandro Del Gobbo ◽  
Stefano Ferrero

We explain the state of the art of the immunohistochemical markers of response in rectal cancers treated with neoadjuvant medical therapies and its implication with prognosis. Neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy is widely used to improve the outcome of patients with locally advanced rectal cancer, and the evaluation of the effects of medical therapy is to date based on histomorphological examination by applying four grading systems of response to therapy (tumor regression grade (TRG)). The need to identify immunohistochemical markers that could ensure a better assessment of response and possibly provide additional prognostic information has emerged. We identified p53, p27kip1, Ki67, matrix metalloprotease-9, survivin, Ki67 proliferative index, CD133, COX2, CD44v6, thymidylate synthase, thymidine phosphorylase, and dihydropyrimidine dehydrogenase as the most common markers studied in literature to date, and we explained their prognostic potential and their implications in the evaluation of the response to preoperative therapies in rectal cancers.


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