When genetics meets immunology: the assessment of genetic and immunological backgrounds in advanced NSCLC patients treated with immunotherapy – preliminary study

Non-small-cell lung cancer treatment relies greatly on immunotherapy, especially in individuals without targetable mutations enabling the use of molecularly targeted therapies. Negative immune checkpoint inhibitors significantly contribute to improving patients' survival and quality of life. Both programmed death ligand 1 expression on tumour cells and tumour mutational burden are used to predict the response to such treatment and qualify patients for therapy; however, in some cases, these biomarkers do not perform sufficiently well. Discovering new markers indicating resistance or response to immunotherapy would therefore enable clinicians to tailor the therapy course to the patient's benefit. This paper aims to describe the genetic and immunological background of immunotherapy courses and identify factors potentially related to clinical benefit or lack of response to immunotherapy, using next-generation sequencing of tumour tissue and flow cytometry analysis of lymphocyte subpopulations in the peripheral blood of non-small cell lung cancer patients in a preliminary study.