Bevacizumab-induced hypertension and proteinuria: a genome-wide study of more than 1000 patients

Cardiac and Nephrological Complications Related to the Use of Antiangiogenic and Anti-Programmed Cell Death Protein 1 Receptor/Programmed Cell Death Protein 1 Ligand Therapy

The ability to undergo neoangiogenesis is a common feature with all cancers. Signaling related to vascular endothelial growth factors (VEGF) and their receptors (VEGFR) plays a key role in the process of tumor neoangiogenesis. A close relationship has been demonstrated between excessive VEGF levels and the induction of immunosuppression in the tumor microenvironment. The use of drugs blocking the VEGF function, apart from the anticancer effect, also result in adverse effects, in particular related to the circulatory system and kidneys. Cardiac toxicity associated with the use of such therapy manifests itself mainly in the form of hypertension, thromboembolic episodes and ischemic heart disease. In the case of renal complications, the most common symptoms include renal arterial hypertension, proteinuria and microangiopathy. Although these complications are reversible in 60-80% of cases after cessation of VSP (VEGF pathway inhibitor) therapy, in some cases they can lead to irreversible changes in renal function, whereas cardiac complications may be fatal. Also, the use of PD-1/PD-L1 inhibitors may result in kidney and heart damage. In the case of cardiac complications, the most common symptoms include myocarditis, pericarditis, arrhythmia, acute coronary syndrome and vasculitis, while kidney damage most often manifests as acute kidney injury (AKI), nephrotic syndrome, pyuria or hematuria. The decision whether to resume treatment after the occurrence of cardiovascular and renal complications remains a problem.

Machine Learning Application Identifies Germline Markers of Hypertension in Patients With Ovarian Cancer Treated With Carboplatin, Taxane, and Bevacizumab

Pharmacogenomics studies how genes influence a person's response to treatment. When complex phenotypes are influenced by multiple genetic variations with little effect, a single piece of genetic information is often insufficient to explain this variability. The application of machine learning (ML) in pharmacogenomics holds great potential - namely, it can be used to unravel complicated genetic relationships that could explain response to therapy. In this study, ML techniques were used to investigate the relationship between genetic variations affecting more than 60 candidate genes and carboplatin-induced, taxane-induced, and bevacizumab-induced toxicities in 171 patients with ovarian cancer enrolled in the MITO-16A/MaNGO-OV2A trial. Single-nucleotide variation (SNV, formerly SNP) profiles were examined using ML to find and prioritize those associated with drug-induced toxicities, specifically hypertension, hematological toxicity, nonhematological toxicity, and proteinuria. The Boruta algorithm was used in cross-validation to determine the significance of SNVs in predicting toxicities. Important SNVs were then used to train eXtreme gradient boosting models. During cross-validation, the models achieved reliable performance with a Matthews correlation coefficient ranging from 0.375 to 0.410. A total of 43 SNVs critical for predicting toxicity were identified. For each toxicity, key SNVs were used to create a polygenic toxicity risk score that effectively divided individuals into high-risk and low-risk categories. In particular, compared with low-risk individuals, high-risk patients were 28-fold more likely to develop hypertension. The proposed method provided insightful data to improve precision medicine for patients with ovarian cancer, which may be useful for reducing toxicities and improving toxicity management.

Pretreatment Proteinuria Predicts the Prognosis of Patients Receiving Systemic Therapy for Unresectable Hepatocellular Carcinoma

BACKGROUND

Proteinuria is a common adverse event in systemic therapy for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). However, whether the presence of pretreatment proteinuria affects the clinical course is still unclear.

METHOD

From 2011 to 2022, 321 patients with unresectable HCC who were treated with systemic therapy as first-line treatment were enrolled in this study. We retrospectively analyzed the presence of pretreatment proteinuria and the treatment course of systemic therapy.

RESULTS

In the cohort, 190 patients were tested for proteinuria qualitatively within 3 months before systemic therapy; 75 were treated with sorafenib, 72 were treated with lenvatinib, and 43 were treated with atezolizumab plus bevacizumab. Overall survival tended to be longer for patients treated with lenvatinib and significantly longer with atezolizumab plus bevacizumab in patients without pretreatment proteinuria but not for those treated with sorafenib. Further analysis was performed in 111 patients treated with lenvatinib or atezolizumab plus bevacizumab who had proteinuria measured quantitatively. Multivariate analysis including proteinuria, liver function, and HCC stage revealed that the severity of proteinuria was an independent predictor of prognosis.

CONCLUSION

Pretreatment proteinuria predicts a poorer prognosis in patients with unresectable HCC treated with lenvatinib or atezolizumab plus bevacizumab but not in those treated with sorafenib.

Nano-Based Approved Pharmaceuticals for Cancer Treatment: Present and Future Challenges

Cancer is one of the main causes of death worldwide. To date, and despite the advances in conventional treatment options, therapy in cancer is still far from optimal due to the non-specific systemic biodistribution of antitumor agents. The inadequate drug concentrations at the tumor site led to an increased incidence of multiple drug resistance and the appearance of many severe undesirable side effects. Nanotechnology, through the development of nanoscale-based pharmaceuticals, has emerged to provide new and innovative drugs to overcome these limitations. In this review, we provide an overview of the approved nanomedicine for cancer treatment and the rationale behind their designs and applications. We also highlight the new approaches that are currently under investigation and the perspectives and challenges for nanopharmaceuticals, focusing on the tumor microenvironment and tumor disseminate cells as the most attractive and effective strategies for cancer treatments.

Polygenic Risk Scores for Blood Pressure to Assess the Risk of Severe Bevacizumab-Induced Hypertension in Cancer Patients (Alliance)

Hypertension is a common bevacizumab-induced toxicity. No markers are available to predict patients at risk of developing hypertension. We hypothesized that genetic risk of essential hypertension, as measured by a blood pressure polygenic risk score (PRS), would be associated with risk of severe bevacizumab-induced hypertension. PRSs were calculated for 1,027 bevacizumab-treated patients of European descent with cancer from four clinical trials (Alliance for Clinical Trials in Oncology (Alliance) / Cancer and Leukemia Group B (CALGB) 80303, 40503, 90401, 40502) using summary systolic blood pressure (SBP) and diastolic blood pressure (DBP) genome-wide association results obtained from 757,601 individuals of European descent. The association between PRS and grade 3 bevacizumab-induced hypertension (Common Toxicity Criteria for Adverse Events version 3) in each trial was performed by multivariable logistic regression. Fixed-effect meta-analyses odds ratios (ORs) per standard deviation (SD) of the association of PRS (quantitative) and hypertension across trials were estimated by inverse-variance weighting. PRSs were additionally stratified into quintiles, with the bottom quintile as the referent group. The OR of the association between hypertension and each quintile vs. the referent group was determined by logistic regression. The most significant PRS (quantitative)-hypertension association included up to 67 single-nucleotide variants (SNPs) associated with SBP (P = 0.0077, OR per SD = 1.31, 95% confidence interval (CI), 1.07-1.60), and up to 53 SNPs associated with DBP (P = 0.0209, OR per SD = 1.27, 95% CI, 1.04-1.56). Patients in the top quintile had a higher risk of developing bevacizumab-induced hypertension compared with patients in the bottom quintile using SNPs associated with SBP (P = 4.75 × 10^-4 , OR = 3.72, 95% CI, 1.84-8.16) and DBP (P = 0.076, OR = 1.83, 95% CI, 0.95-3.64). Genetic variants associated with essential hypertension, mainly SBP, increase the risk of severe bevacizumab-induced hypertension.

Combination of Bevacizumab and Osimertinib in Patients with EGFR T790M-Mutated Non-small Cell Lung Cancer

BACKGROUND

Osimertinib may improve the prognosis of patients with epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) T790M-mutated non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC); however, to date, the efficacy and safety of osimertinib plus bevacizumab have not been elucidated.

OBJECTIVE

We aimed to investigate the additional effect of bevacizumab plus osimertinib compared with osimertinib alone in NSCLC patients with EGFR T790M mutation.

METHODS

In this study, 32 patients received osimertinib alone, while 20 patients received osimertinib plus bevacizumab. The median follow-up was 12 months. Overall survival (OS) and progression-free survival (PFS) were estimated and adverse events (AEs) were compared.

RESULTS

The overall response rate (ORR) was higher in the combination group than in the osimertinib-alone group (70.0% vs. 43.8%), and the OS (12.8% ± 7.7% vs. 45.4% ± 12.0%; p = 0.038) and PFS (37.3% ± 11.9% vs. 55.3% ± 14.3%; p = 0.045) were also significantly improved in patients who underwent osimertinib plus bevacizumab. Furthermore, the incidence of hypertension was significantly higher in the combination arm when compared with osimertinib alone (p = 0.003), and the number of other AEs were not significantly increased by adding bevacizumab (all p > 0.05).

CONCLUSION

Concomitant use of bevacizumab and osimertinib in NSCLC patients with EGFR T790M mutation may have potential therapeutic effect than osimertinib alone. Further studies with a larger number of patients are warranted to confirm results of this study.

PIK3R5 genetic predictors of hypertension induced by VEGF-pathway inhibitors

No biomarkers are available to predict patients at risk of developing hypertension induced by VEGF-pathway inhibitors. This study aimed to identify predictive biomarkers of hypertension induced by these drugs using a discovery-replication approach. The discovery set included 140 sorafenib-treated patients (TARGET study) genotyped for 973 SNPs in 56 genes. The most statistically significant SNPs associated with grade ≥2 hypertension were tested for association with grade ≥2 hypertension in the replication set of a GWAS of 1039 bevacizumab-treated patients from four clinical trials (CALGB/Alliance). In the discovery set, rs444904 (G > A) in PIK3R5 was associated with an increased risk of sorafenib-induced hypertension (p = 0.006, OR = 3.88 95% CI 1.54-9.81). In the replication set, rs427554 (G > A) in PIK3R5 (in complete linkage disequilibrium with rs444904) was associated with an increased risk of bevacizumab-induced hypertension (p = 0.008, OR = 1.39, 95% CI 1.09-1.78). This study identified a predictive marker of drug-induced hypertension that should be evaluated for other VEGF-pathway inhibitors.ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier:NCT00073307 (TARGET).