p16 positive oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma (OPSCC) patients are potentially cured with definitive treatment. However, there are currently no reliable biomarkers of treatment failure in p16 positive OPSCC. Pathologist-based visual assessment of tumor cell multinucleation has been shown to be independently prognostic of disease-free survival in p16 positive OPSCC. However, its quantification is time-intensive, subjective, and at risk of interobserver variability.
We present a deep learning-based metric, the multi-nucleation index (MuNI), for prognostication in p16 positive OPSCC. This approach quantifies tumor multi-nucleation from digitally scanned hematoxylin eosin (H&E)-stained slides. Representative H&E whole slide images from 1,094 previously untreated p16 positive OPSCC patients were acquired from six institutions for optimizing and validating MuNI.
MuNI was prognostic for disease-free (DFS), overall (OS), or distant metastasis-free (DMFS) survival in p16 positive OPSCC with HRs of 1.78(95%CI:1.37-2.30), 1.94(1.44-2.60), and 1.88(1.43-2.47), respectively, independent of age, smoking status, treatment type, and T/N-categories in multivariable analyses. It was also prognostic for DFS, OS, and DMFS in OPSCC patients at stages I and III.
MuNI holds promise as a low-cost, tissue non-destructive, H&E stain based digital biomarker test for counseling, treatment, and surveillance of p16 positive OPSCC patients. These data support further confirmation of MuNI in prospective trials.
This work was supported by the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health (under award numbers 1U24CA199374-01, R01CA202752-01A, R01CA208236-01A1, R01CA216579-01A1, R01CA220581-01A1, 1U01CA239055-01), the National Institute for Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (1R43EB028736-01), the National Center for Research Resources (1C06RR12463-01), the VA Merit Review Award (IBX004121A) from the United States Department of Veterans Affairs Biomedical Laboratory Research and Development Service, the DoD Breast Cancer Research Program Breakthrough Level 1 Award (W81XWH-19-1-0668), the DOD Prostate Cancer Idea Development Award (W81XWH-15-1-0558), the DOD Lung Cancer Investigator-Initiated Translational Research Award (W81XWH-18-1-0440), the DOD Peer Reviewed Cancer Research Program (W81XWH-16-1-0329), the Ohio Third Frontier Technology Validation Fund, the Wallace H. Coulter Foundation Program in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, and the Clinical and Translational Science Award Program (CTSA) at Case Western Reserve University, the Michael E. DeBakey VA Medical Center, an institutional pilot grant (1IK2CX001953) and Dan L Duncan Comprehensive Cancer Center Support Grant (NCI-CA125123). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, the Department of Defense, or the United States Government.

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