Pathologic Response Rates After Neoadjuvant Therapy for Sarcoma: a Single Institution Study
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
cancers Article Pathologic Response Rates after Neoadjuvant Therapy for Sarcoma: A Single Institution Study Crystal Seldon 1, Gautam Shrivastava 1 , Melanie Fernandez 1, John Jarboe 1, Sheila Conway 2, Juan Pretell 2, Laura Freedman 1, Aaron Wolfson 1 , Wei Zhao 3, Deukwoo Kwon 3,4, Andrew Rosenberg 5, Ty Subhawong 6, Jonathan Trent 7 and Raphael Yechieli 1,* 1 Department of Radiation Oncology, Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of Miami, Miami, FL 33136, USA; [email protected] (C.S.); [email protected] (G.S.); [email protected] (M.F.); [email protected] (J.J.); [email protected] (L.F.); [email protected] (A.W.) 2 Department of Orthopedic Surgery, University of Miami, Miami, FL 33136, USA; [email protected] (S.C.); [email protected] (J.P.) 3 Biostatistics and Bioinformatics Shared Resource, Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of Miami, Miami, FL 33136, USA; [email protected] (W.Z.); [email protected] (D.K.) 4 Department of Public Health Sciences, University of Miami, Miami, FL 33136, USA 5 Department of Pathology, University of Miami, Miami, FL 33136, USA; [email protected] 6 Department of Radiology, University of Miami, Miami, FL 33136, USA; [email protected] 7 Department of Hematology Oncology, Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of Miami, Miami, FL 33136, USA; [email protected] * Correspondence: [email protected]; Tel.:+305-243-5965 Citation: Seldon, C.; Shrivastava, G.; Simple Summary: For high-grade soft tissue sarcomas (STS), combined modality treatment with Fernandez, M.; Jarboe, J.; Conway, S.; surgery and radiation therapy is the standard of care. The addition of chemotherapy has been shown Pretell, J.; Freedman, L.; Wolfson, A.; to decrease the risk of local recurrence and improve survival. Evaluating treatment response with Zhao, W.; Kwon, D.; et al. Pathologic surrogate modalities such as MRI, CT and PET imaging have substantial limitations. Pathologic Response Rates after Neoadjuvant necrosis of the surgical specimen is a direct indicator of the effect of treatment on tumor cells. Studies Therapy for Sarcoma: A Single in STS and other malignancies have shown that increasing rates of treatment-induced tumor necrosis Institution Study. Cancers 2021, 13, 1074. https://doi.org/10.3390/ correlate with improvement of oncological outcomes and survival. However, the relationship between cancers13051074 pathologic response and outcomes of specific neoadjuvant treatments for STS remains indeterminate. We hypothesized that sequential neoadjuvant chemotherapy and radiation yields higher rates of Academic Editors: Michiel A. J. van pathologic complete response (pCR) than neoadjuvant radiation or chemotherapy alone. Our results de Sande, Rick Haas and Aykut Uren indicate that neoadjuvant chemotherapy and radiation yields superior pCR compared to other neoadjuvant regimens. Received: 24 January 2021 Accepted: 25 February 2021 Abstract: (1) Background: Pathologic necrosis of soft tissue sarcomas (STS) has been used to determine Published: 3 March 2021 treatment response, but its relationship to neoadjuvant treatments remains indeterminate. In this retrospective, single institution study, we hypothesized that neoadjuvant chemoradiation (NA-CRT) Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral yields higher rates of pathologic complete response (pCR) than neoadjuvant radiation (NA-XRT) or with regard to jurisdictional claims in chemotherapy (NA-CT) alone. (2) Methods: Patients with extremity STS between 2011–2020 who published maps and institutional affil- received neoadjuvant treatment were included. pCR was defined as percent necrosis of the surgical iations. specimen greater than or equal to 90%. (3) Results: 79 patients were analyzed. 51.9% of the population were male with a mean age of 58.4 years. 49.4% identified as Non-Hispanic White. Twenty-six (32.9%) patients achieved pCR while 53 (67.1%) did not. NA-CT (OR 15.82, 95% CI = 2.58–96.9, p = 0.003 in univariate (UVA) and OR 24.7, 95% CI = 2.88–211.2, p = 0.003 in multivariate (MVA), respectively) and Copyright: © 2021 by the authors. NA-XRT (OR 5.73, 95% CI = 1.51–21.8, p = 0.010 in UVA and OR 7.95, 95% CI = 1.87–33.7, p = 0.005 in Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. MVA, respectively) was significantly associated with non- pCR when compared to NA-CRT. The analysis This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and also demonstrated that grade 3 tumors, when using grade 2 as reference, also had significantly higher conditions of the Creative Commons odds of achieving pCR (OR 0.23, 95% CI = 0.06–0.80, p = 0.022 in UVA and OR 0.16, 95% CI = 0.04–0.70, Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// p = 0.015 in MVA, respectively). (4) Conclusion: NA-CRT yields superior pCR compared to other creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ neoadjuvant regimens. This extends to higher grade tumors. 4.0/). Cancers 2021, 13, 1074. https://doi.org/10.3390/cancers13051074 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/cancers Cancers 2021, 13, 1074 2 of 11 Keywords: soft tissue sarcoma; neoadjuvant therapy; pathologic complete response 1. Introduction Soft tissue sarcomas (STS) are rare tumors derived from mesenchymal cells [1]. STS involve less than 1% of all adult malignancies with an expected incidence of 13,130 new cases in the United States in 2020 [2]. Localized STS have a five-year relative survival rate of 81%, however the survival rate drops to 16% with distant spread of disease [3]. Treatment approaches for STS vary across sarcoma centers of excellence [4]. For high-grade tumors, combined modality treatment with surgery and radiation therapy is the standard of care [5], preferably with neoadjuvant radiation (NA-XRT) to reduce late toxicities of fibrosis, edema, and joint stiffness [6,7]. Although the addition of adjuvant chemotherapy to surgery with or without radiation decreases the risk of local recurrence and improves survival [8], this approach has not been globally implemented. Recently, neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NA-CT) and neoadjuvant sequential chemoradiation (NA- CRT) have been explored as treatment regimens. A large meta-analysis identified benefits in survival, distant recurrence (DR), and local recurrence (LR) with the addition of chemother- apy to localized therapy for STS. These benefits were further improved with the addition of ifosfamide to doxorubicin-based regimens [8]. Additional trials evaluating NA-CRT have shown benefits in overall survival (OS) and local control [9,10]. At our institution, patients with high-grade extremity sarcomas are treated with sequential neoadjuvant chemotherapy and radiation therapy followed by an oncologic resection. Surrogate modalities to measure tumor treatment response such as MRI, CT, and PET imaging, remain with substantial limitations. Pathologic necrosis of the surgical specimen is a direct indicator of the effect of treatment on tumor cells. Studies in STS and other ma- lignancies have shown that increasing rates of treatment-induced tumor necrosis correlate with prognostic oncological outcomes and survival [11–14]. However, the relationship between pathologic response and outcomes of specific neoadjuvant treatments remains in- determinate. In this retrospective single institution study, we sought to determine whether sequential NA-CRT yields higher rates of pathologic response and superior oncologic outcomes than either NA-XRT or NA-CT alone. 2. Materials and Methods A retrospective review was conducted on 289 patients diagnosed with extremity STS between 2011 and 2020 at the University of Miami. This analysis was approved by the University of Miami Institutional Review Board 20190880 and due to the retrospective nature of this study, informed consent was waived. All patients were older than 18 and treated with NA-CT, NA-XRT, or NA-CRT followed by oncologic resection performed by the Orthopedic oncology team. Exclusion criteria included patients who did not receive neoadjuvant therapy fol- lowed by an oncologic resection. Patients with low-grade sarcoma, rhabdomyosarcoma, extraosseous Ewing, primitive neuroectodermal tumors, osteosarcoma, chondrosarcoma, Kaposi’s sarcoma, angiosarcoma of the scalp/face, or any sarcoma of the head and neck were excluded based on RTOG 0630 [15] and RTOG 9514 [10] criteria. Neoadjuvant radia- tion therapy was delivered in 25 fractions to a dose of 50 Gy in 2 Gy per day increments. Resection was performed an average of 10 weeks after completion of radiation therapy. Age was calculated from date of birth to date of tissue diagnosis. Survival status was taken from the medical record as was gender, race, and ethnicity. Patients identified their gender as male or female. Ethnicity was classified as Hispanic or non-Hispanic. For race, patients identified as White, Black, Asian, multiracial, or unknown. The date of diagnosis was the date of pathologic confirmation of STS. Tumor location was classified as originating in the upper or lower extremity. Tumor grade and histology were identified on the pre-operative pathology report. The following data were obtained from the surgical Cancers 2021, 13, 1074 3 of 11 pathology report: percent necrosis, margin status, distance from closest margin, tumor size, treatment effect, and number of positive nodes. Status at last follow-up was categorized as alive without recurrence, alive with local regional recurrence, alive with distant recurrence, or deceased. All staging for analysis was based on the American Joint Committee on Cancer (AJCC) Staging System for STS of the trunk and extremities, 8th edition. Pathologic complete response (pCR) was defined as percent necrosis of the surgical specimen greater than or equal to 90% based on criteria from the ARST1321 trial [16]. Recurrences were listed as local if they occurred in the same region as the primary tumor or distant if they occurred outside of the primary location. Date of recurrence was listed as the date of pathological confirmation of recurrent disease or radiologic confirmation in the absence of a biopsy. Local recurrence free interval is defined as the time from surgery to the time of latest follow-up. Patient demographics and disease characteristics were summarized using descriptive statistics.