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Published OnlineFirst January 10, 2019; DOI: 10.1158/1078-0432.CCR-18-1680 Translational Cancer Mechanisms and Therapy Clinical Cancer Research Distinct Molecular Profiles and Immunotherapy Treatment Outcomes of V600E and V600K BRAF-Mutant Melanoma Ines^ Pires da Silva1, Kevin Y.X. Wang2, James S. Wilmott1, Jeff Holst3, Matteo S. Carlino1,4, John J. Park5, Camelia Quek1, Matthew Wongchenko6, Yibing Yan6, Graham Mann1,7, Douglas B. Johnson8, Jennifer L. McQuade9, Rajat Rai1, Richard F. Kefford1,4,5, Helen Rizos1,5, Richard A. Scolyer1,10, Jean Y.H.Yang2, Georgina V. Long1,11, and Alexander M. Menzies1,11 Abstract Purpose: BRAF V600E and V600K melanomas have distinct lower expression of the ERK pathway feedback regulator clinicopathologic features, and V600K appear to be less dual-specificity phosphatase 6, confirmed with TCGA responsive to BRAFiÆMEKi. We investigated mechanisms for data (116 V600E, 17 V600K). Pathway analysis showed this and explored whether genotype affects response to V600K had lower expression of ERK and higher expression immunotherapy. of PI3K-AKT genes than V600E. Higher mutational load Experimental Design: Pretreatment formalin-fixed was observed in V600K, with a higher proportion of muta- paraffin-embedded tumors from patients treated with tions in PIK3R1 and tumor-suppressor genes. In patients BRAFiÆMEKi underwent gene expression profiling and treated with anti–PD-1, V600K (n ¼ 19) had superior DNA sequencing. Molecular results were validated using outcomes than V600E (n ¼ 84), including response rate The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) data. An independent (53% vs. 29%, P ¼ 0.059), PFS (median, 19 vs. 2.7 months, cohort of V600E/K patients treated with anti–PD-1 immu- P ¼ 0.049), and overall survival (20.4 vs. 11.7 months, notherapy was examined. P ¼ 0.081). Results: Baseline tissue and clinical outcome with Conclusions: BRAF V600K melanomas appear to benefit BRAFiÆMEKi were studied in 93 patients (78 V600E, 15 less from BRAFiÆMEKi than V600E, potentially due to V600K). V600K patients had numerically less tumor regres- less reliance on ERK pathway activation and greater use sion (median, À31% vs. À52%, P ¼ 0.154) and shorter of alternative pathways. In contrast, these melanomas progression-free survival (PFS; median, 5.7 vs. 7.1 months, have higher mutational load and respond better to P ¼ 0.15) compared with V600E. V600K melanomas had immunotherapy. Introduction fi BRAF 1 The identi cation of driver mutations in melanoma Melanoma Institute Australia and The University of Sydney, Sydney, New South fi Wales, Australia. 2School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of has led to the development of speci c inhibitors targeting the Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. 3School of Medical Sciences and ERK pathway, which have high response rates and improve Prince of Wales Clinical School, University of New South Wales, Sydney, New survival in patients with BRAF-mutant advanced melanoma South Wales, Australia. 4Crown Princess Mary Cancer Centre Westmead Hos- and those at high risk of recurrence (1–4). BRAF mutations are 5 pital, Westmead, New South Wales, Australia. Departments of Biomedical present in approximately 40% of cutaneous melanomas, and Sciences and Clinical Medicine, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, 6 the majority occur at codon 600 (90%; ref. 5). Among these, Macquarie University, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Genentech, Inc., > South San Francisco, California. 7Westmead Institute for Medical Research, 70% to 80% are V600E (codon GTG GAG), 20% to 30% University of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. 8Vanderbilt University are V600K (GTG>AAG), and rarer mutations including Medical Center, Nashville, Tennessee. 9The University of Texas MD Anderson V600R (GTG>AGG), V600D (GTG>GAT), V600E2 (GTG>GAA), Cancer Center, Houston, Texas. 10Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, Sydney, New V600G (GTG>GGG), V600M (GTG>ATG), V600A (GTG>GCG), 11 South Wales, Australia. Royal North Shore and Mater Hospitals, Sydney, New and V600L (GTG>TTG; refs. 1, 6, 7). South Wales, Australia. Previous studies have shown that V600E and V600K BRAF- Note: Supplementary data for this article are available at Clinical Cancer mutant metastatic melanomas have distinct clinicopathologic Research Online (http://clincancerres.aacrjournals.org/). features, suggesting different etiology (8, 9). V600K melanomas Corresponding Author: Alexander M. Menzies, Melanoma Institute Australia, occur more frequently in older people, in the head and neck The University of Sydney and Royal North Shore and Mater Hospitals, 40 region, and are associated with chronic sun damage (8, 9). Rocklands Rd, North Sydney, NSW 2060, Australia. Phone: 612-9911-7200; Fax: Furthermore, even though individual phase III targeted therapy 612-9954-9435; E-mail: [email protected] trials have not performed a direct comparison between V600E and doi: 10.1158/1078-0432.CCR-18-1680 V600K-mutant melanomas, in three separate trials, V600K mel- Ó2019 American Association for Cancer Research. anomas had numerically lower response rate and shorter median 1272 Clin Cancer Res; 25(4) February 15, 2019 Downloaded from clincancerres.aacrjournals.org on September 25, 2021. © 2019 American Association for Cancer Research. Published OnlineFirst January 10, 2019; DOI: 10.1158/1078-0432.CCR-18-1680 Genetic Profile and Outcomes of V600E/V600K-Treated Melanoma Tumor samples and molecular testing Translational Relevance Tumor genomic DNA and RNA were extracted from formalin- This study demonstrates that V600E and V600K BRAF- fixed, paraffin-embedded (FFPE) melanoma tissue pretreatment mutant melanomas are biologically distinct subtypes, not only samples from the 93 patients (BRAFiÆMEKi cohort). Two samples having different clinical phenotypes, but also having different were from primary melanomas, 25 were from lymph nodes, molecular features and differing responses to systemic thera- and the remaining 66 were from distant metastatic sites. Samples pies. V600K melanomas, most frequent in older patients with were macrodissected prior to nucleic acid extraction. DNA was chronic sun damage, have less activation of the ERK pathway extracted using QIAamp DNA FFPE Tissue Kit (Qiagen, #56404), than V600E melanomas, what might explain their potential and RNA was extracted using the High Pure RNA Micro Kit (Roche, lower benefit with BRAFi À/þ MEKi inhibitors, but in contrast, #04823125001). they have a higher mutational load and respond better to immunotherapy. The differences in gene expression and muta- NanoString RNA gene expression analysis. A custom-designed tional load between V600E and V600K BRAF-mutant mela- NanoString panel of 814 probes was used (Supplementary nomas provide mechanistic data that translate to clinically Table S1). Of these, 5 genes (HPRT1, GUSB, CLTC, PGK1, and significant differences in response to BRAFi À/þ MEKi inhi- SDHA) were built-in as housekeeping genes, 8 probes were bitors and immunotherapy. Such findings should lead to the negative controls, and 6 were positive controls. All samples had development of alternative treatment approaches for specific mutant BRAF detected with adequate quality. Expression data subtypes of BRAF-mutant melanoma. were imported and normalized by the NanoStringQCPro pack- age, following the manufacturer's recommendations (20). Next-generation DNA sequencing. A pan-cancer 88-gene next-gen- progression-free survival (PFS) with BRAFi compared with V600E eration sequencing (NGS) panel to detect DNA coding mutations melanomas, and two pooled analyses of BRAFiÆMEKi showed was performed on all 93 samples as has been previously described fl shorter PFS in multivariate analysis (10–15). As far as we are (21). Brie y, 963 amplicons targeting 88 genes were enriched for  aware, there are no published data on the potential mechanisms by Access Array (Fluidigm) and sequenced (2 108 bp). FASTQ responsible for these features, nor whether the BRAF-mutant reads were aligned to the human reference genome (NCBI Build genotype influences response to immunotherapy. 37) using GSNAP (22, 23). Duplicate reads in the resulting BAM fi In this study, we sought to identify potential mechanisms for le were marked using PicardTools, and indels realigned using the these apparent clinicopathologic differences, by comparing gene GATK IndelRealigner tool. The median sequencing depth was – expression and mutational profiles of V600E and V600K mela- 2,822x (range, 4 3,415x), and a minimum of 150x was required fi nomas from patients treated with BRAFiÆMEKi, validated on the for analysis. Synonymous coding mutations (as de ned by Skin Cutaneous Melanoma (SKCM) The Cancer Genome Atlas Ensembl) were discarded, and mutational load was calculated (TCGA) dataset. We also explored whether the specific BRAF- as number of mutations per sample (Supplementary Table S2). mutant genotype affects response to immunotherapy. TCGA data. TCGA SKCM (24) RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) and whole-exome sequencing (WES) datasets for BRAF V600E (N ¼ Materials and Methods 116) and V600K (n ¼ 17) samples were downloaded on February Patients and outcome 6, 2017, using R package TCGAbiolinks (25) from the GDC Consecutive patients with V600E/K BRAF-mutant metastatic portal. All alignments were performed using the human reference melanoma enrolled on clinical trials of BRAFÆMEK inhibitors genome GRCh38.d1.vd1. Aligned and cocleaned BAM files were at two Melanoma Institute Australia treatment facilities (The processed through the Somatic Mutation Calling Workflow as Poche Centre, North Sydney, and Westmead