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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Immunol.

Sec. Cancer Immunity and Immunotherapy

This article is part of the Research TopicAdvances in the understanding of the immune system relationship with neoplasia and immuno-oncology approachesView all 6 articles

Evaluation of Six Clinical Prognostic Scores in NSCLC Patients Undergoing First line Chemoimmunotherapy

Provisionally accepted
Jiaqi  SunJiaqi Sun1,2Dan  LiDan Li2Jiayin  LiuJiayin Liu2Lan  WangLan Wang2Long  WangLong Wang2Jing  HanJing Han2Xue  ZhangXue Zhang2Xinliang  ZhouXinliang Zhou2Li  FengLi Feng2Zhisong  FanZhisong Fan2Jing  ZuoJing Zuo2Yudong  WangYudong Wang2*
  • 1China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation 731 Hospital, Beijing, China
  • 2The Fourth Hospital of Hebei Medical University, Shijiazhuang, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

Background: The study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of six prognostic scores for predicting the outcomes to first-line chemoimmunotherapy (CIT) in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients. Materials and methods: NSCLC patients receiving first-line CIT were included. The prognostic scores evaluated were RMH, MDACC, MDACC+NLR, MDA-ICI, LIPI, and GRIm. Survival curves were generated using the Kaplan–Meier method, and univariate and multivariate analyses were conducted via the Cox proportional hazards regression model. The C‑index and time‑dependent AUC were calculated to comprehensively quantify and compare the predictive performance of each system. The Log‑rank test and False Discovery Rate (FDR) correction was employed to compare survival outcomes across different risk groups defined by the six prognostic scoring systems. Results: A cohort of 298 NSCLC patients was analyzed. The median overall survival (mOS) of patients receiving first-line CIT was 36.5 months (95%CI: NE-NE), and the median progression-free survival (mPFS) was 14.5 months (95%CI: 11.9-17.1). Multivariate analysis showed that bone metastasis(P=0.042), and more than two metastatic sites (P=0.031) as independent predictors of poor OS. In quantitative performance comparison, RMH achieved the highest C-indices for both OS (0.672, 95%CI: 0.531-0.813) and PFS (0.652, 0.564-0.737); MDACC also performed well, with C-indices for OS (0.651, 0.564-0.737) and PFS (0.615, 0.554-0.738). Time-dependent AUC analysis showed that MDA-ICI attained the highest 1-year OS and PFS AUC (0.630 and 0.592), followed by the MDACC+NLR (0.600 and 0.571). Based on log-rank testing and following FDR correction, only the MDACC maintained a statistically significant association with OS (high-risk 14.0 vs. intermediate-risk 34.6 vs. low-risk NR months; P=0.003, Q=0.036). For PFS, the MDACC+NLR score showed a marginal significance after FDR correction (Q=0.054). Conclusions: The RMH, MDACC, and MDACC+NLR scoring systems all demonstrate prognostic utility in the NSCLC patients treated with first-line CIT, and the optimal choice among them may depend on the specific clinical context and the outcome metric of primary interest.

Keywords: chemoimmunotherapy, Clinical Prognostic Scores, efficacy, First-line Anti-tumorTreatment, NSCLC, prognosis

Received: 30 Aug 2025; Accepted: 30 Jan 2026.

Copyright: © 2026 Sun, Li, Liu, Wang, Wang, Han, Zhang, Zhou, Feng, Fan, Zuo and Wang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence: Yudong Wang

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