Efficacy of PD-1 inhibitors in first-line treatment for advanced gastroesophageal junction and gastric cancer by subgroups: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Background PD-1 inhibitors have been approved for the first-line treatment of patients with advanced gastric cancer, gastroesophageal junction cancer or esophageal adenocarcinoma. However, the results of several clinical trials are not entirely consistent, and the dominant population of first-line immunotherapy for advanced gastric/gastroesophageal junction cancer still needs to be precisely determined. Objective This objective of this study is to evaluate the efficacy of anti-PD-1/PD-L1 therapy in advanced gastric/gastroesophageal junction adenocarcinoma patients through a systematic review and meta-analysis of relevant clinical trials. Method The PubMed, Embase, and Cochrane Library electronic databases were searched up to 1 August 2022 for clinical trials of anti-PD-1/PD-L1 immunotherapy for the first-line treatment of advanced gastroesophageal cancer. Hazard ratios and 95% confidence intervals for overall survival, progression-free survival and objective response rates were extracted and pooled for meta-analysis. Prespecified subgroups included the following: agent type, PD-L1 expression, and high microsatellite instability. Results This study analyzed 5 RCTs involving 3355 patients. Compared with the chemotherapy group, the combined immunotherapy group had a significantly higher objective response rate (OR = 0.63, 95% CI: 0.55-0.72, P<0.00001) and prolonged overall survival (HR = 0.82, 95% CI: 0.76-0.88, P<0.00001) and progression-free survival (HR=0.75, 95% CI: 0.69-0.82, P<0.00001). The combination of immunotherapy and chemotherapy prolonged OS in both MSI-H (HR = 0.38, P = 0.002) and MSS (HR = 0.78, P < 0.00001) populations, but there was a significant difference between groups (P = 0.02). However, in improving ORR, the benefit of ICI combined with chemotherapy in the MSS group and MSI-H group was not significantly different between groups (P = 0.52). Combination therapy with ICIs was more effective than chemotherapy alone in prolonging OS in the subgroup with a high CPS, regardless of the CPS cutoff for PD-L1. However, when the cutoff of CPS was 1, the difference between subgroups did not reach statistical significance (P = 0.12), while the benefit ratio of the MSI-H group was higher when the cutoff was 10 (P =0.004) than when the cutoff value was 5 (P=0.002). Conclusions For first-line treatment of advanced gastroesophageal cancer, an ICI combination strategy is more effective than chemotherapy. The subgroup of patients with a CPS = 10 has a more significant benefit, and CPS = 10 has the potential to be used as an accurate marker of the dominant population of immuno-combined therapy.