Background: The best hope of cure for patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is surgical resection. However, even in stage IA patients 30% die within 5 years. Further improvements in survival require a biomarker(s) which defines the subset of these patients destined to do badly so that they could be targeted for additional therapies. Here, we investigate whether the immunohistochemical expression of a key kinase implicated in lung cancer biology, the mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) can predict survival outcome in early stage resected NSCLC patients. Methods: 134 patients with resected early stage (IA-IIB) NSCLC were pathologically reviewed centrally prior to staining for mTOR. Multiple variables including age, sex, stage, angio-invasion, lymph node status and mTOR staining were assessed by univariate and multivariate analyses. Findings: Stage (p = 0.044), lymph node status (p = 0.049), angio-invasion (p= 0.017) and mTOR staining (p = 0.007) were significant univariate predictors of poor survival. However, only angio-invasion (p= 0.016) and mTOR staining (p = 0.008) remained significant following multivariate analysis. Moreover, mTOR staining was the only variable to predict poor outcome in patients who had either negative lymph-nodes (p =0.016) or were stage IA (p = 0.0016). Interpretation: mTOR staining provides a new biomarker for poor outcome in early stage NSCLC and could enable resected stage IA patients to be selected for novel therapies possibly with an mTOR inhibitor.

Citation Information: In: Proc Am Assoc Cancer Res; 2009 Apr 18-22; Denver, CO. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; 2009. Abstract nr 2770.

100th AACR Annual Meeting-- Apr 18-22, 2009; Denver, CO

American Association for Cancer Research
2009