Targeted Next Generation Sequencing data from the randomized AIO-KRK-0212-PANAMA trial cohort

The PANAMA trial investigated the efficacy of Panitumumab (Pmab) when added to maintenance therapy with fluorouracil and folinic acid (FU/FA) in patients with RAS wild-type metastatic colorectal cancer. In a prespecified, exploratory molecular analysis of the Full Analysis Set, we analysed a biomarkerprofile in order to further refine the selection for Pmab therapy beyond RAS and BRAFV600E mutations. Furthermore, we evaluated the prognostic relevance of this biomarker profile. This biomarker consisted of genes which were previously associated with primary resistance to therapy with anti-EGFR-antibody. Previous studies investigated biomarker panels consisting of similar genemutations (e.g. PRESSING, PRESSING2, DeRoock, Valentino study). However, they failed to demonstrate a predictive value of Pmab + FU/FA maintenance therapy because there was no control arm without Pmab.In our analysis, 202 samples in the Full Analysis Set underwent targeted NGS using the Cancer Hotspot Panel v2 from Illumina on a MiSeq System. NGS data was analyed jointly with the clinical and therapeutic data from the PANAMA trial. Our investigation reports a prognostic and predictive value of our biomarker panel and may further aid in the selection of patients for Pmab therapy.