Xenograft-based platform-independent gene signatures to predict response to alkylating chemotherapy, radiation, and combination therapy for glioblastoma

BACKGROUND: Predictive molecular biomarkers to select optimal treatment for patients with glioblastoma and other cancers are lacking. New strategies are needed when large randomized trials with correlative molecular data are not feasible. METHODS: Gene signatures were developed from 31 orthotopic glioblastoma patient-derived xenografts (PDXs), treated with standard therapies, to predict benefit from radiotherapy (RT-GS), temozolomide (Chemo-GS), or the combination (ChemoRT-GS). Independent validation was performed in a heterogeneously treated clinical cohort of 502 glioblastoma patients with overall survival as the primary endpoint. Multivariate Cox analysis was used to adjust for confounding variables and evaluate interactions between signatures and treatment. RESULTS: PDX models recapitulated the clinical heterogeneity of glioblastoma patients. RT-GS, Chemo-GS and ChemoRT-GS were correlated with benefit from treatment in the PDX models. In independent clinical validation, higher RT-GS scores were associated with increased survival only in patients receiving RT (p=0.0031, HR=0.78 [0.66-0.92]), higher Chemo-GS scores were associated with increased survival only in patients receiving chemotherapy (p<0.0001, HR=0.66 [0.55-0.8]), and higher ChemoRT-GS scores were associated with increased survival only in patients receiving ChemoRT (p=0.0001, HR=0.54 [0.4-0.74]). RT-GS and ChemoRT-GS had significant interactions with treatment on multivariate analysis (p=0.0009 and 0.02 respectively) indicating that they are bona fide predictive biomarkers. CONCLUSIONS: Using a novel PDX-driven methodology, we developed and validated three platform-independent molecular signatures that predict benefit from standard of care therapies for glioblastoma. These signatures may be useful to personalize glioblastoma treatment in the clinic and this approach may be a generalizable method to identify predictive biomarkers without resource-intensive randomized trials.