Transcriptomic Analyses of Pretreatment Tumor Biopsy Samples, Response to Neoadjuvant Chemoradiotherapy, and Survival in Patients With Advanced Rectal Cancer.

In this case series of patients with rectal cancer treated with neoadjuvant CRT, the cytotoxic lymphocyte score in pretreatment biopsy samples, as computed by RNA sequencing, was associated with response to CRT and survival. This finding suggests that the cytotoxic lymphocyte score might serve as a biomarker in personalized multimodal rectal cancer treatment.