Immunotherapy has reshaped the field of
cancer therapeutics but the population that benefits are small in many
tumor types, warranting a companion diagnostic test. While immunohistochemistry (IHC) for
programmed death-ligand 1 (PD-L1) or mismatch repair (MMR) and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) for
microsatellite instability (MSI) are the only approved companion diagnostics others are under consideration. An optimal companion diagnostic test might combine the spatial information of IHC with the quantitative information from
RNA expression profiling. Here, we show proof of concept for combination of spatially resolved
protein information acquired by the NanoString GeoMx® Digital Spatial Profiler (DSP) with transcriptomic information from bulk
mRNA gene expression acquired using NanoString nCounter® PanCancer IO 360™ panel on the same cohort of
immunotherapy treated
melanoma patients to create predictive models associated with clinical outcomes. We show that the combination of
mRNA and spatially defined
protein information can predict clinical outcomes more accurately (AUC 0.97) than either of these factors alone.