Molecular and clinical characteristics of IDH mutations in Chinese NSCLC patients and potential treatment strategies

BACKGROUND: Isocitrate dehydrogenase (IDH) is an appealing target for anticancer therapy, and IDH (IDH1/2) inhibitors have been approved for targeted therapy of acute myeloid leukemia (AML) and Cholangiocarcinoma. The therapeutic potential of IDH inhibitors for non‐small‐cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients is under active clinical investigation. Thus, it would be necessary and meaningful to study the molecular and clinical characteristics of IDH mutation in NSCLC patients, especially in the Chinese population. METHODS: A total of 17,978 Chinese patients with NSCLC who underwent next ‐generation sequencing (NGS) testing were retrospectively reviewed. RESULTS: We identified 161 unique IDH mutations in 361 of 17,978 patients (2.01%). Common active‐site mutations, including IDH1(R100), IDH1(R132), IDH2(R140), and IDH2(R172), were detected in 154 patients (0.86%) and were associated with male sex (p = 0.004) and older age (p = 0.02). The IDH mutation spectra observed in NSCLC were quite different from those in glioma or AML. Patients with IDH active‐site mutations exhibited significantly higher coalterations in KRAS (p. G12/13/61, 22.1% vs. 8.2%, p < 0.001) or BRAF (p. V600E, 6.5% vs. 1.0%, p < 0.001), but significantly lower coalterations in activating EGFR (e18–e20, 22.7 vs. 37.9%, p < 0.001) than IDH wild‐type patients. Furthermore, we found that active‐site IDH mutations were correlated with a short PFS (2–5.6 months) and short OS (2–9.5 months), which may arise as a resistance mechanism against common targeted drugs. In vitro, we experimentally observed that the combination of an IDH inhibitor and EGFR TKI could better inhibit lung cancer cell proliferation than an EGFR TKI alone. CONCLUSIONS: Taken together, this study reveals the molecular and clinical characteristics of IDH mutations in Chinese NSCLC patients and provides a theoretical basis for IDH‐directed treatment. The potential of IDH mutations as response markers for targeted therapy warrants further investigation.