A pilot study of volumetric and density tumor analysis of ACC patients treated with vorinostat in a phase II clinical trial

Rationale and objectives: Adenoid cystic carcinoma (ACC) is a rare salivary gland cancer. The vast majority of clinical trials evaluating systemic therapy efficacy in solid tumors use the Response Evaluation Criteria in Solid Tumors (RECIST) to measure response that is limited to 2 dimensional only evaluations, not taking volume or density into account. The indolent behavior ACC represents a challenge toward an appropriate evaluation of therapy response. Objectives: 1) To describe and contrast volumetric and density changes at each time-point, including changes noted from baseline to best response, to currently used 2 dimensional-only criteria (RECIST) and 2) To report the coefficient of variation in volume measurement among three reviewers on a subset of ACC patients.

Materials and methods: We retrospectively assessed a cohort of 18 prospectively treated patients with ACC in a phase 2 trial with vorinostat using a volumetric (viable tumor volume, VTV) and density criteria. Three independent and blinded observers segmented target lesions across a sample of randomly selected computed tomography (CT) exams to examine inter-observer variation.

Results: We found that the average coefficient of variation among observers for all target lesions was 16.1%, with lung lesions displaying a smaller variation at 14.0% (p-value >0.17). We describe examples of decrease in volume and density in several lesions despite stable disease by RECIST.

Conclusion: This pilot study demonstrates that two-dimensional criteria such as RECIST may not be the best criteria to assess response to therapy, especially with evolving tools within picture archiving and communication system (PACS) that can assess volumetric size, density and texture, however, this should be prospectively studied.