9 min
Immune Checkpoint Inhibitor Use in Patients With Inflammatory Bowel Disease: A Closer Look Journal of Clinical Oncology (JCO) Podcast
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- Ciencia
Towards improved characterization of immune-related adverse events in the setting of pre-existing autoimmune disease.
TRANSCRIPT
This JCO Podcast provides observations and commentary on the JCO article “Immune Checkpoint Inhibitor Therapy in Patients with Preexisting Inflammatory Bowel Disease”, by Abu-Sbeih et al. My name is Katy Tsai, and I am Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Division of Hematology/Oncology at the University of California, San Francisco. My oncologic specialty is the treatment of advanced melanoma and non-melanoma skin cancers.
Immune checkpoint inhibitors, referred to as ICIs in this podcast, have transformed the landscape of treatment options in oncology. While ICIs were first approved for the treatment of advanced melanoma in 2011, since that time, ICIs have shown activity in a variety of other histologies. Anti-PD-1 or anti-PD-L1, with or without anti-CTLA-4, are now approved for the treatment of lung cancer, head and neck squamous cell carcinoma, renal cell carcinoma, and many others. While ICIs can result in durable responses, their continued use can be limited by the development of immune-related adverse eventsimmune-related adverse events. Because these events are believed to be autoimmune in nature, there are intuitive safety concerns about ICI use in patients with known autoimmune disease. Can patients with pre-existing autoimmune disease be safely treated with ICI? Are these patients more likely to experience immune-related adverse events related to their autoimmune disease? Is this risk increased if their autoimmune disease is severe, with a history of required immunosuppression? These are all important questions faced by healthcare providers, questions which are not well studied due to the exclusion of patients with known autoimmune disease from pivotal ICI clinical trials.
To address these questions, Abu-Sbeih and colleagues chose to focus on ICI use in patients with pre-existing inflammatory bowel disease. This is a clinically relevant population of interest, given the relatively high incidence of immune-related diarrhea and colitis with ICI use; these immune-related adverse events occur in almost half of patients receiving combination anti-CTLA-4 and anti-PD-1 or PD-L1, about one-third of patients receiving anti-CTLA-4, and less frequently in patients receiving anti-PD-1 or PD-L1 alone. Abu-Sbeih and colleagues conducted a retrospective, multicenter study in which 102 patients – half with Crohn’s disease, half with ulcerative colitis – received ICI between 2010 and 2019. 17 patients received anti-CTLA-4, and 85 received anti-PD-1 or anti-PD-L1. This is a notable cohort of patients, as previous meta-analyses have reported on the safety of ICI use in much smaller numbers of patients with inflammatory bowel disease, and with less detailed clinical characterization of their inflammatory bowel disease. Univariate and multivariate logistic regression were used to assess the risk of gastrointestinal, or GI, adverse events, and was compared to a control population of 11,377 ICI-treated patients without inflammatory bowel disease, from the same participating institutions.
An important observation made by the authors was that the rate of GI immune-related adverse events in the inflammatory bowel disease cohort was significantly higher at 41%, compared to 11% in the non-inflammatory bowel disease cohort. Univariate analysis identified anti-CTLA-4 (given as monotherapy or in combination) as a risk factor for GI immune-related adverse events compared to anti-PD-1/L1 therapy but showed only a tendency toward significance in multivariate analysis, as did inflammatory bowel disease involving the colon. Although none of the collected clinical variables reached significance in multivariate analysis, the authors’ analysis of outcomes in the inflammatory bowel disease cohort is illuminating. Of the 41 inflammatory bowel disease patients who developed diarrhea, 51% had peak g
Towards improved characterization of immune-related adverse events in the setting of pre-existing autoimmune disease.
TRANSCRIPT
This JCO Podcast provides observations and commentary on the JCO article “Immune Checkpoint Inhibitor Therapy in Patients with Preexisting Inflammatory Bowel Disease”, by Abu-Sbeih et al. My name is Katy Tsai, and I am Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Division of Hematology/Oncology at the University of California, San Francisco. My oncologic specialty is the treatment of advanced melanoma and non-melanoma skin cancers.
Immune checkpoint inhibitors, referred to as ICIs in this podcast, have transformed the landscape of treatment options in oncology. While ICIs were first approved for the treatment of advanced melanoma in 2011, since that time, ICIs have shown activity in a variety of other histologies. Anti-PD-1 or anti-PD-L1, with or without anti-CTLA-4, are now approved for the treatment of lung cancer, head and neck squamous cell carcinoma, renal cell carcinoma, and many others. While ICIs can result in durable responses, their continued use can be limited by the development of immune-related adverse eventsimmune-related adverse events. Because these events are believed to be autoimmune in nature, there are intuitive safety concerns about ICI use in patients with known autoimmune disease. Can patients with pre-existing autoimmune disease be safely treated with ICI? Are these patients more likely to experience immune-related adverse events related to their autoimmune disease? Is this risk increased if their autoimmune disease is severe, with a history of required immunosuppression? These are all important questions faced by healthcare providers, questions which are not well studied due to the exclusion of patients with known autoimmune disease from pivotal ICI clinical trials.
To address these questions, Abu-Sbeih and colleagues chose to focus on ICI use in patients with pre-existing inflammatory bowel disease. This is a clinically relevant population of interest, given the relatively high incidence of immune-related diarrhea and colitis with ICI use; these immune-related adverse events occur in almost half of patients receiving combination anti-CTLA-4 and anti-PD-1 or PD-L1, about one-third of patients receiving anti-CTLA-4, and less frequently in patients receiving anti-PD-1 or PD-L1 alone. Abu-Sbeih and colleagues conducted a retrospective, multicenter study in which 102 patients – half with Crohn’s disease, half with ulcerative colitis – received ICI between 2010 and 2019. 17 patients received anti-CTLA-4, and 85 received anti-PD-1 or anti-PD-L1. This is a notable cohort of patients, as previous meta-analyses have reported on the safety of ICI use in much smaller numbers of patients with inflammatory bowel disease, and with less detailed clinical characterization of their inflammatory bowel disease. Univariate and multivariate logistic regression were used to assess the risk of gastrointestinal, or GI, adverse events, and was compared to a control population of 11,377 ICI-treated patients without inflammatory bowel disease, from the same participating institutions.
An important observation made by the authors was that the rate of GI immune-related adverse events in the inflammatory bowel disease cohort was significantly higher at 41%, compared to 11% in the non-inflammatory bowel disease cohort. Univariate analysis identified anti-CTLA-4 (given as monotherapy or in combination) as a risk factor for GI immune-related adverse events compared to anti-PD-1/L1 therapy but showed only a tendency toward significance in multivariate analysis, as did inflammatory bowel disease involving the colon. Although none of the collected clinical variables reached significance in multivariate analysis, the authors’ analysis of outcomes in the inflammatory bowel disease cohort is illuminating. Of the 41 inflammatory bowel disease patients who developed diarrhea, 51% had peak g
9 min