MeImmS: Predict Clinical Benefit of Anti-PD-1/PD-L1 Treatments Based on DNA Methylation in Non-small Cell Lung Cancer

Immunotherapy has become an effective therapy for cancer treatment. However, the development of biomarkers to predict responsiveness of immunotherapies remains a challenge. We have developed an immune score “MeImmS”, which can predict clinical benefits of non-small cell lung cancer patients based on DNA methylation of 8 CpG sites. The 8 CpG sites regulated the expression of immune-related genes and MeImmS was associated with immune-associated pathways, exhausted T cell markers and immune cells. Copy-number loss in1p36.33 may affect the response of cancer patients to immunotherapy. In addition, SAA1, CXCL10, CCR5, CCL19, CXCL11, CXCL13 and CCL5 were found to be key immune regulatory genes in immunotherapy. Together, MeImmS discovered the heterogeneous of non-small cell lung cancer patients and guided the immunotherapy of cancer patients in the future.