Evaluation of the TruSight Oncology 500 Assay for Routine Clinical Testing of Tumor Mutational Burden and Clinical Utility for Predicting Response to Pembrolizumab

Pembrolizumab is approved for treating patients with unresectable or metastatic solid tumors with high tumor mutational burden (TMB), as assessed by the Food and Drug Administration-approved companion diagnostic FoundationOneCDx, after progression on prior treatment. To expand TMB assessment for enriching response to pembrolizumab, TMB measurement from TruSight Oncology 500 (TSO500) was evaluated in archival pan-tumor samples from 294 patients enrolled in eight pembrolizumab mono therapy studies. TSO500 is a panel-based next-generation sequencing assay with broad availability, quick turnaround time, and a standardized bioinformatics pipeline. TSO500 TMB was evaluated for correlation and concordance with two reference methods: FoundationOneCDx and whole-exome sequencing. The TSO500 cut-off for TMB-high was selected based on the receiver-operating characteristic curve analysis against each reference method's cut-off for TMB-high. Clinical utility of the selected TSO500 cut-off (10 mutations/Mb) was assessed by calculating the sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative predictive values, and objective response rate enrichment. There was high correlation and concordance of TSO500 TMB with both reference methods. TSO500 TMB was associated significantly with the best overall response, and the selected cut-off had comparable clinical utility with respective cut-offs for the reference methods in predicting response to pembrolizumab. As a commercial assay with global kit distribution complete with an off-the-shelf software package, TSO500 may provide additional access to immunotherapy for patients with tumors with TMB >= 10 mutations/Mb.

Automated summary

This study evaluated the clinical utility of TSO500, a gene testing method, for determining the eligibility of patients for pembrolizumab treatment. The results showed a high concordance between TSO500 and two reference methods, indicating that TSO500 can effectively predict the response to pembrolizumab in patients with high TMB levels.