Purpose: Although gefitinib prolonged the progression-free survival (PFS) of patients with non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), unpredictable resistance limited its clinical efficacy. Novel predictive biomarkers with explicit mechanisms are urgently needed. Experimental Design: A total of 282 patients with NSCLC with gefitinib treatment were randomly assigned in a 7:3 ratio to exploratory (n = 192) and validation (n = 90) cohorts. The candidate polymorphisms were selected with Haploview4.2 in Hapmap and genotyped by a MassARRAY system, and the feature variables were identified through Randomforest Survival analysis. Tanswell and clonogenic assays, base editing and cell-derived tumor xenograft model were performed to uncover the underlying mechanism. Results: We found that the germline missense polymorphism rs3742076 (A>G, S628P), located in transactivation domain of FOXM1, was associated with PFS in exploratory (median PFS: GG vs. GA&AA, 9.20 vs. 13.37 months, P = 0.00039, HR = 2.399) and validation (median PFS: GG vs. GA&AA, 8.13 vs. 13.80 months, P = 0.048, HR = 2.628) cohorts. We elucidated that rs3742076_G conferred resistance to gefitinib by increasing protein stability of FOXM1 and facilitating an aggressive phenotype in vitro and in vivo through activating wnt/β-catenin signaling pathway. Meanwhile, FOXM1 level was highly associated with prognosis in patients with EGFR-mutant NSCLC. Mechanistically, FOXM1 rs3742076_G upregulated wnt/β-catenin activity by directly binding to β-catenin in cytoplasm and promoting transcription of β-catenin in nucleus. Remarkably, inhibition of β-catenin markedly reversed rs3742076_G-induced gefitinib resistance and aggressive phenotypes. Conclusions: These findings characterized rs3742076_G as a gain-of-function polymorphism in mediating gefitinib resistance and tumor aggressiveness, and highlighted the variant as a predictive biomarker in guiding gefitinib treatment.

Drug-induced liver injury (DILI) remains a critical clinical issue and has been a treatment challenge nowadays as it was in the past. However, the traditional biomarkers or indicators are insufficient to predict the risks and outcome of patients with DILI due to its poor specificity and sensitivity. Recently, the development of high-throughput technologies, especially omics and multi-omics has sparked growing interests in identification of novel clinical DILI biomarkers, many of which also provide a mechanistic insight. Accordingly, in this mini-review, we summarize recent advances in novel clinical biomarkers for DILI prediction, diagnosis and prognosis and highlight the limitations or challenges involved in biomarker discovery or their clinical translation. Although huge work has been done, most reported biomarkers lack comprehensive information and more specific DILI biomarkers are still needed to complement the traditional biomarkers such as ALT or AST in clinical decision making.

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Supplementary Table from <i>FOXM1</i> Variant Contributes to Gefitinib Resistance via Activating Wnt/β-Catenin Signal Pathway in Patients with Non–Small Cell Lung Cancer