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International Metastatic Renal Cell Carcinoma Database Consortium (IMDC) classification and regression tree analysis to characterize objective response rates (ORR) in metastatic renal cell carcinoma (mRCC).

2025· article· en· W4410821876 on OpenAlexaff
Martín Zarbá, Dylan E. O’Sullivan, David Maj, Winson Y. Cheung, Lisa Ludwig, J. Connor Wells, Evan Ferrier, Razane El Hajj Chehade, Frede Donskov, Marc Eid, Sumanta K. Pal, Benoit Beuselinck, Rana R. McKay, Lori Wood, Jae‐Lyun Lee, Cristina Suárez, Kosuke Takemura, Ignacio Durán, Toni K. Choueiri, Daniel Yick Chin Heng

Bibliographic record

VenueJournal of Clinical Oncology · 2025
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldMedicine
TopicRenal cell carcinoma treatment
Canadian institutionsQueen Elizabeth II Health Sciences CentreUniversity of CalgaryDalhousie UniversityOccupational Cancer Research Centre
Fundersnot available
KeywordsMedicineRenal cell carcinomaOncologyClear cell renal cell carcinomaInternal medicineCarcinomaCancer research

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

4532 Background: Therapies for mRCC have evolved significantly, making treatment decisions more complex. We used machine learning (ML) to identify whether this could help identify subgroups of patients who have a high probability of response. Methods: Patients from IMDC were identified and a ML classification and regression tree analysis was conducted, in which we grew a complex tree up to a depth of 30 with a minimum node split size of 2 with no constraints on the cost-complexity parameter. The resulting tree was pruned according to the cost-complexity parameter that minimized the leave one out cross-validated error rate and had a minimum bucket size of 25 patients. Results: 2,549 patients were included, 73.2% male, 13.5% non-clear cell histology, 70.3% nephrectomy, and 19.4%, 54.2%, and 26.4% had favorable, intermediate and poor IMDC risk respectively. 1L treatment regimens consisted of VEGF inhibitors (51.5%), IO-IO combinations (32.3%), and IO-TKI combinations (16.2%). The ORR was 36.0% overall, with 29.6% for VEGF inhibitors, 39.1% for IO-IO, and 50.2% for IO-TKI combinations. ML identified 5 hierarchal variables —therapy type, prior nephrectomy (PN), lung metastasis (LM), other metastases, and age— that divided patients into 7 different categories with different response probabilities (see Table). VEGF therapy showed the poorest response, with no additional variables able to predict response. The best ORR was observed in patients treated with IO-TKI and PN; and in those treated with IO-IO, PN, and only lung metastasis. Factors associated with poorer responses included non-clear cell histology, older age, bone and liver metastases, poor performance status, elevated neutrophils, and poor IMDC risk score. Conclusions: This large-scale ML analysis identified five key clinical variables that predict treatment response in mRCC, with treatment type emerging as the primary determinant. These results suggest that treatment selection for mRCC could potentially be optimized by considering these hierarchical variables, though further validation is needed. ML analysis results: Groups of patients and associated outcomes. Risk Groups N (%) ORR (%) Odd Ratio TTNT 18-month survival 1) VEGF 1313 (51.5) 29.6 Ref. 9.4 (8.6-10.3) 0.62 (0.59-0.65) 2) IO-IO or IO-TKI and no PN 443 (17.4) 35.0 1.28 (1.02-1.60) 10.2 (8.8-11.3) 0.59 (0.55-0.65) 3) IO-IO and PN a) No LM 137 (5.4) 29.2 0.98 (0.66-1.43) 17.2 (10.6-30.1) 0.85 (0.78-0.92) b) LM and other met 267 (10.5) 43.8 1.87 (1.42-2.44) 13.0 (10.1-20.5) 0.78 (0.72-0.83) c) Only LM 85 (3.3) 60.0 3.56 (2.28-5.63) 39.2 (14.4-NA) 0.93 (0.87-0.99) 4)IO-TKI and PN a) Age 70+ 78 (3.2) 43.6 1.84 (1.15-2.91) 35.7 (19.8-NA) 0.80 (0.71-0.91) b) Age < 70 226 (8.9) 58.4 3.34 (2.50-4.47) 24.7 (22.4-36.4) 0.88 (0.84-0.93) Overall 2549 36.0 11.5 (10.7-12.2) 0.68 (0.67-0.70)

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.007
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.015
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Observational · Consensus signal: Observational
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: Empirical
Teacher disagreement score0.007
Threshold uncertainty score0.036

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0070.015
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0010.001
Bibliometrics0.0020.001
Science and technology studies0.0000.000
Scholarly communication0.0010.000
Open science0.0010.001
Research integrity0.0010.001
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0010.000

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.120
GPT teacher head0.432
Teacher spread0.312 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designObservational
Domainnot available
GenreEmpirical

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

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Citations0
Published2025
Admission routes1
Has abstractyes

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