Bio:

Katrina Case lives Kansas City, Missouri and attends the Pembroke Hill School as a junior. She has participated in the Greater Kansas City Science and Engineering Fair for seven years and during this time has earned the Pioneers in Science Award and many other recognitions for her research. This year, Kayte won the 2019 Kansas BioGENEius Challenge, BioKansas People's Choice Award was also a finalist for the International BioGENEius challenge at the BIO convention in Philadelphia. Her current project abstract ”The Role of Tumor Neoantigens in the Differential Response to Immunotherapy (IO) in EGFR and BRAF Mutated Lung Cancers - Quantity or Quality?” was accepted to the European Society for Medical Oncology in Barcelona, Spain. Kayte spent the summer of 2019 in Moldova on a National Student Language Initiative for Youth (NSLI-Y) scholarship study program sponsored by the United States State Department. Kayte likes to play basketball and lacrosse for her school. She enjoys debate and also participating in her school's Youth in Government program.

Abstract

Importance of Neoantigen Affinity for Determining the Effectiveness of Immunotherapy in Lung Carcinomas

Lung cancer patients with activating EGFR mutations tend to have poor response to immunotherapy, but not all activating mutation driven lung cancers. This study examined the relationship between differential agretopicity index (DAI), mutational burden (MB), and survival with mutated BRAF or EGFR genes in lung carcinomas (LUAD). The findings of the study describe a model for more robust antitumor immune response to immunotherapy in BRAF positive tumors compared to EGFR positive tumors. There is a strong relationship with DAI and higher mortality rate with BRAF positive tumors and no such relationship for EGFR positive tumors. Therefore, DAI is only important in determining patient outcome for select gene mutations.