Metabolite panel predicts treatment response
CANCER
We took an unbiased metabolomic discovery approach which identified a panel of four serum metabolites at time of entry to the MGTX trial, which were highly predictive of a strictly defined outcome of treatment response at six months of standard-of-care therapy for MG (sensitivity 0.89, specificity 0.91). One purpose of the investigation was to perform a discovery study of prednisone treatment regardless of prior treatment, which is a typical clinical situation. Slightly more than three quarters of subjects were on some dose of prednisone at study entry. Removal of subjects not on prednisone did not significantly alter AUCs and only enhanced the sensitivity of detection of severely treatment resistant subjects. Histidine, FFA(13:0), γ-Cholestenol and guanosine as a group were highly predictive of a rigorous treatment response. Serum histidine has been found to be predictive of treatment-response to PD-1 inhibitors, which modify the immune response to small cell cancer [