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To examine the association between 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose (18F-FDG) uptake in positron emission tomography/computed tomography (PET/CT) and the response to anti-programmed cell death-1 (PD-1) monoclonal antibody therapy in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients, 89 patients with advanced or recurrent NSCLC were retrospectively analysed. Maximum standardized uptake value (SUVmax) in 18F-FDG PET/CT and the response to anti-PD-1 antibodies were recorded. A cut-off value of SUVmax was determined by receiver operating characteristic curve analysis for patient stratification. Among the 89 patients evaluated, 24 were classified as responders (all partial response), and 65 as non-responders. The average SUVmax of the responders was 15.60 (range, 6.44–51.10), which was significantly higher than that of the non-responders (11.61; range, 2.13–32.75; P = 0.0168, Student’s t-test). The cut-off SUVmax value selected for stratification was 11.16 (sensitivity and specificity, 0.792 and 0.585, respectively). The response rate of patients with SUVmax value ≥ 11.16 (41.3% [19/46]) was significantly higher than that of patients with SUVmax < 11.16 (11.6% [5/43], P = 0.0012, Chi-squared test). The SUVmax in 18F-FDG PET/CT is a potential predictive marker of response to anti-PD-1 antibody therapy in NSCLC patients. Further prospective studies of large populations are necessary to validate these results.

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Background/Aim: Albumin-bilirubin (ALBI) grade is an indicator of liver dysfunction and is useful for predicting postoperative prognosis of hepatocellular carcinomas. However, the significance of ALBI grade in non-small cell lung carcinoma (NSCLC) has not been elucidated. Patients and Methods: We analyzed 947 patients with pStage IA-IIIA NSCLC. We divided patients into ALBI grade 1 and grade 2/3 groups. We then analyzed the association of ABLI grade with clinicopathological characteristics and prognosis in NSCLC by using propensity-score matching. Results: ALBI grade 2/3 was significantly associated with older age, male sex, advanced pT status, and histological type. Even after propensity-score matching, ALBI grade 2/3 patients had significantly worse cancer-specific survival (CSS) than ALBI grade 1 patients (5year CSS: 87.3% versus 92.8%; p=0.0247). In multivariate analysis, ALBI grade 2/3 was an independent predictor of CSS (HR=1.9; p=0.0177). Conclusion: ALBI grade was an independent prognostic factor in surgically resected NSCLC.Non-small cell lung carcinoma (NSCLC) is one of the most lethal neoplasms worldwide (1). Studies to elucidate prognostic factors of surgically resected NSCLC have been conducted to determine appropriate postoperative follow-up and whether adjuvant chemotherapy is required.Albumin-bilirubin (ALBI) grade was first described by Johnson et al. in 2015 as an indicator of liver dysfunction in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (2). ALBI grade, which is determined using only serum levels of albumin and totalbilirubin, has attracted much attention as a more convenient marker compared with conventional indexes of liver dysfunction such as Child-Pugh score and liver damage grade (2-5). In hepatocellular carcinoma, several studies have demonstrated that ALBI grade is useful for predicting the response to radiofrequency ablation (6), transarterial chemoembolization (7, 8), and molecular targeted therapy (8-10), as well as postoperative prognosis (2,5,6,8,(11)(12)(13). Furthermore, the prognostic value of ALBI grade has also been described in intrahepatic cholangiocarcinomas (14), pancreatic cancer (15), and gastric cancer (16). However, the significance of ALBI grade in NSCLC has not been elucidated.The association of liver function with NSCLC was evaluated in a study that analyzed surgical outcomes of NSCLC with liver cirrhosis and demonstrated that the postoperative mortality of patients with Child-Pugh score B was higher than that of patients with Child-Pugh score A (17). Therefore, liver function may be an important factor in the prognosis of NSCLC. In the present study, we aimed to elucidate the prognostic impact of ALBI grade in surgically resected NSCLC patients. Patients and MethodsPatients. This study was approved by our institutional review board (Kyushu University, Kyushu, Japan, IRB No. 2019-232). One thousand seventeen patients with surgically resected pathological

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