TY - JOUR AU - Mehnert, Janice M. AU - Panda, Anshuman AU - Zhong, Hua AU - Hirshfield, Kim AU - Damare, Sherri AU - Lane, Katherine AU - Sokol, Levi AU - Stein, Mark N. AU - Rodriguez-Rodriquez, Lorna AU - Kaufman, Howard L. AU - Ali, Siraj AU - Ross, Jeffrey S. AU - Pavlick, Dean C. AU - Bhanot, Gyan AU - White, Eileen P. AU - DiPaola, Robert S. AU - Lovell, Ann AU - Cheng, Jonathan AU - Ganesan, Shridar T1 - Immune activation and response to pembrolizumab in POLE-mutant endometrial cancer PY - 2016/06/01/ AB - Antibodies that target the immune checkpoint receptor programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1) have resulted in prolonged and beneficial responses toward a variety of human cancers. However, anti–PD-1 therapy in some patients provides no benefit and/or results in adverse side effects. The factors that determine whether patients will be drug sensitive or resistant are not fully understood; therefore, genomic assessment of exceptional responders can provide important insight into patient response. Here, we identified a patient with endometrial cancer who had an exceptional response to the anti–PD-1 antibody pembrolizumab. Clinical grade targeted genomic profiling of a pretreatment tumor sample from this individual identified a mutation in DNA polymerase epsilon (POLE) that associated with an ultramutator phenotype. Analysis of The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) revealed that the presence of POLE mutation associates with high mutational burden and elevated expression of several immune checkpoint genes. Together, these data suggest that cancers harboring POLE mutations are good candidates for immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy. JF - The Journal of Clinical Investigation JA - J Clin Invest SN - 0021-9738 DO - 10.1172/JCI84940 VL - 126 IS - 6 UR - https://doi.org/10.1172/JCI84940 SP - 2334 EP - 2340 PB - The American Society for Clinical Investigation ER -