Identifying Inflammatory Biomarkers in Small-Cell Lung Cancer Using Olink Assays

The study employs the Olink Cytokine panel in a clinical trial where extensive-stage small-cell lung cancer patients underwent chemotherapy, followed by cycles of candidate drug treatment. A subgroup of patients was separated into three treatment groups varying in disease progressions based on the number of treatment cycles post chemotherapy. Plasma samples from each cycle time point were collected and analyzed for their cytokine concentration. The expression pattern of each analyte during the initial chemotherapy were compared statistically between the treatment groups, and a subset of cytokines are found to uniquely exhibit higher expression over time in the rapidly progressing patients. The study demonstrates that inflammatory markers such as cytokine or chemokines, which are often below detection limit in multi-omics studies, can be reliably detected in a multiplex manner and utilized with respect to the progression of disease to aid in stratification and prediction of clinical course.