Estimating the Prognostic Value of the NTRK Fusion Biomarker for Comparative Effectiveness Research in The Netherlands

We evaluated the prognostic value of the neurotrophic tyrosine receptor kinase (NTRK) gene fusions by comparing the survival of patients with NTRK+ tumours with patients without NTRK+ tumours.

We used genomic and clinical registry data from the Center for Personalized Cancer Treatment (CPCT-02) study containing a cohort of cancer patients who were treated in Dutch clinical practice between 2012 and 2020. We performed a propensity score matching analysis, where NTRK+ patients were matched to NTRK− patients in a 1:4 ratio. We subsequently analysed the survival of the matched sample of NTRK+ and NTRK− patients using the Kaplan–Meier method and Cox regression, and performed an analysis of credibility to evaluate the plausibility of our result.

Among 3556 patients from the CPCT-02 study with known tumour location, 24 NTRK+ patients were identified. NTRK+ patients were distributed across nine different tumour types: bone/soft tissue, breast, colorectal, head and neck, lung, pancreas, prostate, skin and urinary tract. NTRK fusions involving the NTRK3 gene (46%) and NTRK1 gene (33%) were most common. The survival analysis rendered a hazard ratio (HR) of 1.44 (95% CI 0.81–2.55) for NTRK+ patients. Using the point estimates of three prior studies on the prognostic value of NTRK fusions, our finding that the HR is > 1 was deemed plausible.

NTRK+ patients may have an increased risk of death compared with NTRK− patients. When using historic control data to assess the comparative effectiveness of TRK inhibitors, the prognostic value of the NTRK fusion biomarker should therefore be accounted for.