Precision medicine for patients with gastro-oesophageal cancer: A subset analysis of the ProfiLER program

Background: Chemotherapy, anti-HER2 and PD-1 antibodies are standard treatments but only a minority of patients derive long-term benefit from these agents.

Methods: In this report we describe the mutational landscape and outcome of patients with gastroesophageal cancers enroled in the ProfiLER program.

Results: Adenocarcinoma (n = 86, 59%), signet-cell (n = 37, 25%) and squamous-cell (n = 21, 14%) were the dominant histology amongst 147 patients. Genomic analyses could be performed for 114 (78%) patients. The most common genomic alterations involved ERBB2 (15%), KRAS (12%), CCND1 (7%), FGFR1-3 (8%), EGFR (5%) and MET (3%), TP53 (51%) and CDKN2A/B (10%). ERBB2, MET and FGFR alterations were found exclusively in the adenocarcinoma and signet-cell subtypes, while CCND1 amplification, TP53 mutations and CDKN2A/B loss were found in both adenocarcinoma and squamous-cell subtypes. Nine patients (8%) received therapy matched to their genomic alteration, with 5 of them achieving disease control. In an exploratory analysis, patients with stage IV disease at diagnosis who had an actionable alteration had longer overall survival compared to those without.

Conclusion: Genomic profiling for patients with advanced gastroesophageal cancers allows the identification of actionable alterations in large proportion of patients. Increased accessibility to molecularly matched therapy may improve survival in this disease.