An artificial intelligence-based model exploiting H&E images to predict recurrence in negative sentinel lymph-node melanoma patients.

BACKGROUND: Risk stratification and treatment benefit prediction models are urgent to improve negative sentinel lymph node (SLN-) melanoma patient selection, thus avoiding costly and toxic treatments in patients at low risk of recurrence. To this end, the application of artificial intelligence (AI) could help clinicians to better calculate the recurrence risk and choose whether to perform adjuvant therapy. METHODS: We made use of AI to predict recurrence-free status (RFS) within 2-years from diagnosis in 94 SLN- melanoma patients. In detail, we detected quantitative imaging information from H&E slides of a cohort of 71 SLN- melanoma patients, who registered at Istituto Tumori "Giovanni Paolo II" in Bari, Italy (investigational cohort, IC). For each slide, two expert pathologists firstly annotated two Regions of Interest (ROIs) containing tumor cells alone (TUMOR ROI) or with infiltrating cells (TUMOR + INF ROI). In correspondence of the two kinds of ROIs, two AI-based models were developed to extract information directly from the tiles in which each ROI was automatically divided. This information was then used to predict RFS. Performances of the models were computed according to a 5-fold cross validation scheme. We further validated the prediction power of the two models on an independent external validation cohort of 23 SLN- melanoma patients (validation cohort, VC). RESULTS: The TUMOR ROIs have revealed more informative than the TUMOR + INF ROIs. An Area Under the Curve (AUC) value of 79.1% and 62.3%, a sensitivity value of 81.2% and 76.9%, a specificity value of 70.0% and 43.3%, an accuracy value of 73.2% and 53.4%, were achieved on the TUMOR and TUMOR + INF ROIs extracted for the IC cohort, respectively. An AUC value of 76.5% and 65.2%, a sensitivity value of 66.7% and 41.6%, a specificity value of 70.0% and 55.9%, an accuracy value of 70.0% and 56.5%, were achieved on the TUMOR and TUMOR + INF ROIs extracted for the VC cohort, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: Our approach represents a first effort to develop a non-invasive prognostic method to better define the recurrence risk and improve the management of SLN- melanoma patients.

A targeted gene signature stratifying mediastinal gray zone lymphoma into classical HL-like or PMBL-like subtypes.

Not available.

circPVT1 and PVT1/AKT3 show a role in cell proliferation, apoptosis, and tumor subtype-definition in small cell lung cancer.

Small cell lung cancer (SCLC) is treated as a homogeneous disease, although the expression of NEUROD1, ASCL1, POU2F3, and YAP1 identifies distinct molecular subtypes. The MYC oncogene, amplified in SCLC, was recently shown to act as a lineage-specific factor to associate subtypes with histological classes. Indeed, MYC-driven SCLCs show a distinct metabolic profile and drug sensitivity. To disentangle their molecular features, we focused on the co-amplified PVT1, frequently overexpressed and originating circular (circRNA) and chimeric RNAs. We analyzed hsa_circ_0001821 (circPVT1) and PVT1/AKT3 (chimPVT1) as examples of such transcripts, respectively, to unveil their tumorigenic contribution to SCLC. In detail, circPVT1 activated a pro-proliferative and anti-apoptotic program when over-expressed in lung cells, and knockdown of chimPVT1 induced a decrease in cell growth and an increase of apoptosis in SCLC in vitro. Moreover, the investigated PVT1 transcripts underlined a functional connection between MYC and YAP1/POU2F3, suggesting that they contribute to the transcriptional landscape associated with MYC amplification. In conclusion, we have uncovered a functional role of circular and chimeric PVT1 transcripts in SCLC; these entities may prove useful as novel biomarkers in MYC-amplified tumors.

Enhanced Delivery of 5-Aminolevulinic Acid by Lecithin Invasomes in 3D Melanoma Cancer Model.

Photodynamic therapy (PDT) is a noninvasive therapeutic approach for the treatment of skin cancer and diseases. 5-Aminolevulinic acid is a prodrug clinically approved for PDT. Once internalized by cancer cells, it is rapidly metabolized to the photosensitizer protoporphyrin IX, which under the proper light irradiation, stimulates the deleterious reactive oxygen species (ROS) production and leads to cell death. The high hydrophilicity of 5-aminolevulinic acid limits its capability to cross the epidermis. Lipophilic derivatives of 5-aminolevulinic acid only partly improved skin penetration, thus making its incorporation into nanocarriers necessary. Here we have developed and characterized 5-aminolevulinic acid loaded invasomes made of egg lecithin, either 1,2-dilauroyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine or 1,2-dioleoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine, and the terpene limonene. The obtained invasomes are highly thermostable and display a spherical morphology with an average size of 150 nm and an encapsulation efficiency of 80%; moreover, the ex vivo epidermis diffusion tests established that nanovesicles containing the terpene led to a much higher skin penetration (up to 80% in 3 h) compared to those without limonene and to the free fluorescent tracer (less than 50%). Finally, in vitro studies with 2D and 3D human cell models of melanoma proved the biocompatibility of invasomes, the enhanced intracellular transport of 5-aminolevulinic acid, its ability to generate ROS upon irradiation, and consequently, its antiproliferative effect. A simplified scaffold-based 3D skin model containing melanoma spheroids was also prepared. Considering the results obtained, we conclude that the lecithin invasomes loaded with 5-aminolevulinic acid have a good therapeutic potential and may represent an efficient tool that can be considered a valid alternative in the topical treatment of melanoma and other skin diseases.

NR1H3 (LXRα) is associated with pro-inflammatory macrophages, predicts survival and suggests potential therapeutic rationales in diffuse large b-cell lymphoma.

The role of macrophages (Mo) and their prognostic impact in diffuse large B-cell lymphomas (DLBCL) remain controversial. By regulating the lipid metabolism, Liver-X-Receptors (LXRs) control Mo polarization/inflammatory response, and their pharmacological modulation is under clinical investigation to treat human cancers, including lymphomas. Herein, we surveyed the role of LXRs in DLBCL for prognostic purposes. Comparing bulk tumors with purified malignant and normal B-cells, we found an intriguing association of NR1H3, encoding for the LXR-α isoform, with the tumor microenvironment (TME). CIBERSORTx-based purification on large DLBCL datasets revealed a high expression of the receptor transcript in M1-like pro-inflammatory Mo. By determining an expression cut-off of NR1H3, we used digital measurement to validate its prognostic capacity on two large independent on-trial and real-world cohorts. Independently of classical prognosticators, NR1H3high patients displayed longer survival compared with NR1H3low cases and a high-resolution Mo GEP dissection suggested a remarkable transcriptional divergence between subgroups. Overall, our findings indicate NR1H3 as a Mo-related biomarker identifying patients at higher risk and prompt future preclinical studies investigating its mouldability for therapeutic purposes.

Biobanks and scientists: supply and demand.

The biobanks, providers of biospecimens, and the scientists, users of biological material, are both strategic actors in translational medicine but the communication about those two subjects seems to be delicate. Recently, biobank managers from US and Europe stressed the danger of underuse of biospecimens stored in their biobanks thus stimulating the debate about innovative ways to collect samples and to communicate their availability. We hypothesize that the already stored collections meet the interest of present scientists only in specific situations. Serial biospecimens from patients with large associated clinical data concerning voluptuary habits, environmental exposure, anthropomorphic information are needed to meet the even more specific projects the scientists are planning. The hypothesis of activation of specific sections in ranked journals aimed to facilitate the communication between partners interested in finding/collecting ad hoc biospecimens is discussed.

Infiltrating mast cells correlate with angiogenesis in bone metastases from gastric cancer patients.

While gastric cancer is a well established angiogenesis driven tumor, no data has been published regarding angiogenesis stimulated by mast cells (MCs) positive for tryptase in bone metastases from gastric cancer patients (BMGCP). It is well established that MCs play a role in immune responses and more recently it was demonstrated that MCs have been involved in tumor angiogenesis. We analyzed infiltrating MCs and neovascularization in BMGCP diagnosed by histology. A series of 15 stage T3-4N2-3M1 (by AJCC for Gastric Cancer Staging 7th Edition) BMGCP from bone biopsies were selected. Tumour tissue samples were evaluated by mean of immunohistochemistry and image analysis methods in terms of MCs density positive to tryptase (MCDPT), MCs area positive to tryptase (MCAPT), microvascular density (MVD) and endothelial area (EA). A significant correlation between MCDPT, MCAPT, MVD and EA groups to each other was found by Pearson and t-test analysis (r ranged from 0.68 to 0.82; p-value ranged from 0.00 to 0.02). Our very preliminary data suggest that infiltrating MCs positive for tryptase may play a role in BMGCP angiogenesis, and could be further evaluated as a novel target of anti-angiogenic therapy.

Explainable 3D CNN based on baseline breast DCE-MRI to give an early prediction of pathological complete response to neoadjuvant chemotherapy.

BACKGROUND: So far, baseline Dynamic Contrast-Enhanced Magnetic Resonance Imaging (DCE-MRI) has played a key role for the application of sophisticated artificial intelligence-based models using Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) to extract quantitative imaging information as earlier indicators of pathological Complete Response (pCR) achievement in breast cancer patients treated with neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC). However, these models did not exploit the DCE-MRI exams in their full geometry as 3D volume but analysed only few individual slices independently, thus neglecting the depth information. METHOD: This study aimed to develop an explainable 3D CNN, which fulfilled the task of pCR prediction before the beginning of NAC, by leveraging the 3D information of post-contrast baseline breast DCE-MRI exams. Specifically, for each patient, the network took in input a 3D sequence containing the tumor region, which was previously automatically identified along the DCE-MRI exam. A visual explanation of the decision-making process of the network was also provided. RESULTS: To the best of our knowledge, our proposal is competitive than other models in the field, which made use of imaging data alone, reaching a median AUC value of 81.8%, 95%CI [75.3%; 88.3%], a median accuracy value of 78.7%, 95%CI [74.8%; 82.5%], a median sensitivity value of 69.8%, 95%CI [59.6%; 79.9%] and a median specificity value of 83.3%, 95%CI [82.6%; 84.0%], respectively. The median and CIs were computed according to a 10-fold cross-validation scheme for 5 rounds. CONCLUSION: Finally, this proposal holds high potential to support clinicians on non-invasively early pursuing or changing patient-centric NAC pathways.

Concomitant Immunotherapy and Metastasis-Directed Radiotherapy in Upper Tract Urothelial Carcinoma: A Biomarker-Driven, Original, Case-Based Proof-of-Concept Study.

Metastatic upper tract urothelial carcinoma (mUTUC) has a poor prognosis. Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) have demonstrated efficacy in patients with metastatic urothelial carcinoma. However, data supporting the use of ICIs in patients with mUTUC are limited. A promising synergy between ICI and concomitant radiotherapy (RT) has been reported in patients with mUTUC. Our research involved a case-based investigation and emphasized the successful integration of different specialists' skills. Observed after partial urethrectomy procedures for muscle-invasive upper tract urothelial carcinoma (UTUC), the radiological detection of lung metastases prompted us to implement cisplatin-based first-line chemotherapy and molecular characterization in the treatment process. We uncovered alterations in the ERBB2 and FGFR3 genes and mismatch repair deficiency at a molecular level. First-line chemotherapy treatment led to a stable disease, and the patient was started on maintenance immunotherapy with Avelumab. Subsequently, an increase in the size of the lung nodules was described, and the patient received radiotherapy for three lung lesions in combination with immunotherapy. After 3 months, a restaging CT scan reported a complete response, which is still ongoing. We discuss the mechanisms driving RT/ICI synergy and the molecular profile of mUTUC as factors that should be considered in therapeutic strategy planning. Molecular insight enhances the originality of our study, providing a nuanced understanding of the genetic landscape of mUTUC and paving the way for targeted therapeutic strategies. The therapeutic armamentarium expansion encourages the design of a multimodal and personalized approach for each mUTUC patient, taking into account tumor heterogeneity and molecular profiling.

Machine learning survival models trained on clinical data to identify high risk patients with hormone responsive HER2 negative breast cancer.

For endocrine-positive Her2 negative breast cancer patients at an early stage, the benefit of adding chemotherapy to adjuvant endocrine therapy is not still confirmed. Several genomic tests are available on the market but are very expensive. Therefore, there is the urgent need to explore novel reliable and less expensive prognostic tools in this setting. In this paper, we shown a machine learning survival model to estimate Invasive Disease-Free Events trained on clinical and histological data commonly collected in clinical practice. We collected clinical and cytohistological outcomes of 145 patients referred to Istituto Tumori "Giovanni Paolo II". Three machine learning survival models are compared with the Cox proportional hazards regression according to time-dependent performance metrics evaluated in cross-validation. The c-index at 10 years obtained by random survival forest, gradient boosting, and component-wise gradient boosting is stabled with or without feature selection at approximately 0.68 in average respect to 0.57 obtained to Cox model. Moreover, machine learning survival models have accurately discriminated low- and high-risk patients, and so a large group which can be spared additional chemotherapy to hormone therapy. The preliminary results obtained by including only clinical determinants are encouraging. The integrated use of data already collected in clinical practice for routine diagnostic investigations, if properly analyzed, can reduce time and costs of the genomic tests.

VEGFA Status as a Predictive Marker of Therapy Outcome in Metastatic Gastric Cancer Patients Following Ramucirumab-Based Treatment.

Metastatic gastric cancer (mGC) often has a poor prognosis and may benefit from a few targeted therapies. Ramucirumab-based anti-angiogenic therapy targeting the VEGFR2 represents a milestone in the second-line treatment of mGC. Several studies on different cancers are focusing on the major VEGFR2 ligand status, meaning VEGFA gene copy number and protein overexpression, as a prognostic marker and predictor of response to anti-angiogenic therapy. Following this insight, our study aims to examine the role of VEGFA status as a predictive biomarker for the outcome of second-line therapy with Ramucirumab and paclitaxel in mGC patients. To this purpose, the copy number of the VEGFA gene, by fluorescence in situ hybridization experiments, and its expression in tumor tissue as well as the density of micro-vessels, by immunohistochemistry experiments, were assessed in samples derived from mGC patients. This analysis found that amplification of VEGFA concomitantly with VEGFA overexpression and overexpression of VEGFA with micro-vessels density are more represented in patients showing disease control during treatment with Ramucirumab. In addition, in the analyzed series, it was found that amplification was not always associated with overexpression of VEGFA, but overexpression of VEGFA correlates with high micro-vessel density. In conclusion, overexpression of VEGFA could emerge as a potential biomarker to predict the response to anti-angiogenic therapy.

Analyzing breast cancer invasive disease event classification through explainable artificial intelligence.

Introduction: Recently, accurate machine learning and deep learning approaches have been dedicated to the investigation of breast cancer invasive disease events (IDEs), such as recurrence, contralateral and second cancers. However, such approaches are poorly interpretable. Methods: Thus, we designed an Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) framework to investigate IDEs within a cohort of 486 breast cancer patients enrolled at IRCCS Istituto Tumori "Giovanni Paolo II" in Bari, Italy. Using Shapley values, we determined the IDE driving features according to two periods, often adopted in clinical practice, of 5 and 10 years from the first tumor diagnosis. Results: Age, tumor diameter, surgery type, and multiplicity are predominant within the 5-year frame, while therapy-related features, including hormone, chemotherapy schemes and lymphovascular invasion, dominate the 10-year IDE prediction. Estrogen Receptor (ER), proliferation marker Ki67 and metastatic lymph nodes affect both frames. Discussion: Thus, our framework aims at shortening the distance between AI and clinical practice.

Autocrine/Paracrine Loop Between SCF+/c-Kit+ Mast Cells Promotes Cutaneous Melanoma Progression.

c-Kit, or mast/stem cell growth factor receptor Kit, is a tyrosine kinase receptor structurally analogous to the colony-stimulating factor-1 (CSF-1) and platelet-derived growth factor (PDGF) CSF-1/PDGF receptor Tyr-subfamily. It binds the cytokine KITLG/SCF to regulate cell survival and proliferation, hematopoiesis, stem cell maintenance, gametogenesis, mast cell development, migration and function, and it plays an essential role in melanogenesis. SCF and c-Kit are biologically active as membrane-bound and soluble forms. They can be expressed by tumor cells and cells of the microenvironment playing a crucial role in tumor development, progression, and relapses. To date, few investigations have concerned the role of SCF+/c-Kit+ mast cells in normal, premalignant, and malignant skin lesions that resemble steps of malignant melanoma progression. In this study, by immunolabeling reactions, we demonstrated that in melanoma lesions, SCF and c-Kit were expressed in mast cells and released by themselves, suggesting an autocrine/paracrine loop might be implicated in regulatory mechanisms of neoangiogenesis and tumor progression in human melanoma.

An Invasive Disease Event-Free Survival Analysis to Investigate Ki67 Role with Respect to Breast Cancer Patients' Age: A Retrospective Cohort Study.

Characterization of breast cancer into intrinsic molecular profiles has allowed women to live longer, undergoing personalized treatments. With the aim of investigating the relation between different values of ki67 and the predisposition to develop a breast cancer-related IDE at different ages, we enrolled 900 patients with a first diagnosis of invasive breast cancer, and we partitioned the dataset into two sub-samples with respect to an age value equal to 50 years. For each sample, we performed a Kaplan−Meier analysis to compare the IDE-free survival curves obtained with reference to different ki67 values. The analysis on patients under 50 years old resulted in a p-value < 0.001, highlighting how the behaviors of patients characterized by a ki67 ranging from 10% to 20% and greater than 20% were statistically significantly similar. Conversely, patients over 50 years old characterized by a ki67 ranging from 10% to 20% showed an IDE-free survival probability significantly greater than patients with a ki67 greater than 20%, with a p-value of 0.01. Our work shows that the adoption of two different ki67 values, namely, 10% and 20%, might be discriminant in designing personalized treatments for patients under 50 years old and over 50 years old, respectively.

A machine learning ensemble approach for 5- and 10-year breast cancer invasive disease event classification.

Designing targeted treatments for breast cancer patients after primary tumor removal is necessary to prevent the occurrence of invasive disease events (IDEs), such as recurrence, metastasis, contralateral and second tumors, over time. However, due to the molecular heterogeneity of this disease, predicting the outcome and efficacy of the adjuvant therapy is challenging. A novel ensemble machine learning classification approach was developed to address the task of producing prognostic predictions of the occurrence of breast cancer IDEs at both 5- and 10-years. The method is based on the concept of voting among multiple models to give a final prediction for each individual patient. Promising results were achieved on a cohort of 529 patients, whose data, related to primary breast cancer, were provided by Istituto Tumori "Giovanni Paolo II" in Bari, Italy. Our proposal greatly improves the performances returned by the baseline original model, i.e., without voting, finally reaching a median AUC value of 77.1% and 76.3% for the IDE prediction at 5-and 10-years, respectively. Finally, the proposed approach allows to promote more intelligible decisions and then a greater acceptability in clinical practice since it returns an explanation of the IDE prediction for each individual patient through the voting procedure.

A deep learning model based on whole slide images to predict disease-free survival in cutaneous melanoma patients.

The application of deep learning on whole-slide histological images (WSIs) can reveal insights for clinical and basic tumor science investigations. Finding quantitative imaging biomarkers from WSIs directly for the prediction of disease-free survival (DFS) in stage I-III melanoma patients is crucial to optimize patient management. In this study, we designed a deep learning-based model with the aim of learning prognostic biomarkers from WSIs to predict 1-year DFS in cutaneous melanoma patients. First, WSIs referred to a cohort of 43 patients (31 DF cases, 12 non-DF cases) from the Clinical Proteomic Tumor Analysis Consortium Cutaneous Melanoma (CPTAC-CM) public database were firstly annotated by our expert pathologists and then automatically split into crops, which were later employed to train and validate the proposed model using a fivefold cross-validation scheme for 5 rounds. Then, the model was further validated on WSIs related to an independent test, i.e. a validation cohort of 11 melanoma patients (8 DF cases, 3 non-DF cases), whose data were collected from Istituto Tumori 'Giovanni Paolo II' in Bari, Italy. The quantitative imaging biomarkers extracted by the proposed model showed prognostic power, achieving a median AUC value of 69.5% and a median accuracy of 72.7% on the public cohort of patients. These results remained comparable on the validation cohort of patients with an AUC value of 66.7% and an accuracy value of 72.7%, respectively. This work is contributing to the recently undertaken investigation on how treat features extracted from raw WSIs to fulfil prognostic tasks involving melanoma patients. The promising results make this study as a valuable basis for future research investigation on wider cohorts of patients referred to our Institute.

Robustness Evaluation of a Deep Learning Model on Sagittal and Axial Breast DCE-MRIs to Predict Pathological Complete Response to Neoadjuvant Chemotherapy.

To date, some artificial intelligence (AI) methods have exploited Dynamic Contrast-Enhanced Magnetic Resonance Imaging (DCE-MRI) to identify finer tumor properties as potential earlier indicators of pathological Complete Response (pCR) in breast cancer patients undergoing neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC). However, they work either for sagittal or axial MRI protocols. More flexible AI tools, to be used easily in clinical practice across various institutions in accordance with its own imaging acquisition protocol, are required. Here, we addressed this topic by developing an AI method based on deep learning in giving an early prediction of pCR at various DCE-MRI protocols (axial and sagittal). Sagittal DCE-MRIs refer to 151 patients (42 pCR; 109 non-pCR) from the public I-SPY1 TRIAL database (DB); axial DCE-MRIs are related to 74 patients (22 pCR; 52 non-pCR) from a private DB provided by Istituto Tumori "Giovanni Paolo II" in Bari (Italy). By merging the features extracted from baseline MRIs with some pre-treatment clinical variables, accuracies of 84.4% and 77.3% and AUC values of 80.3% and 78.0% were achieved on the independent tests related to the public DB and the private DB, respectively. Overall, the presented method has shown to be robust regardless of the specific MRI protocol.

Pathological Complete Response to Neoadjuvant Chemoimmunotherapy for Early Triple-Negative Breast Cancer: An Updated Meta-Analysis.

Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) have made a breakthrough in the systemic treatment for metastatic triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) patients. However, results of phase II and III clinical trials assessing ICIs plus chemotherapy as neoadjuvant treatment were controversial and conflicting. We performed a meta-analysis aimed at assessing the Odds Ratio (OR) of the pathological complete response (pCR) rate in trials assessing neoadjuvant chemoimmunotherapy in TNBC. According to our results, the use of neoadjuvant chemoimmunotherapy was associated with higher pCR (OR 1.95; 95% Confidence Intervals, 1.27-2.99). In addition, we highlighted that this benefit was observed regardless of PD-L1 status since the analysis reported a statistically significant and clinically meaningful benefit in both PD-L1 positive and PD-L1 negative patients. These findings further support the exploration of the role of ICIs plus chemotherapy in early-stage TNBC, given the potentially meaningful clinical impact of these agents. Further studies aimed at more deeply investigating this emerging topic in breast cancer immunotherapy are warranted.

A ultrasound-based radiomic approach to predict the nodal status in clinically negative breast cancer patients.

In breast cancer patients, an accurate detection of the axillary lymph node metastasis status is essential for reducing distant metastasis occurrence probabilities. In case of patients resulted negative at both clinical and instrumental examination, the nodal status is commonly evaluated performing the sentinel lymph-node biopsy, that is a time-consuming and expensive intraoperative procedure for the sentinel lymph-node (SLN) status assessment. The aim of this study was to predict the nodal status of 142 clinically negative breast cancer patients by means of both clinical and radiomic features extracted from primary breast tumor ultrasound images acquired at diagnosis. First, different regions of interest (ROIs) were segmented and a radiomic analysis was performed on each ROI. Then, clinical and radiomic features were evaluated separately developing two different machine learning models based on an SVM classifier. Finally, their predictive power was estimated jointly implementing a soft voting technique. The experimental results showed that the model obtained by combining clinical and radiomic features provided the best performances, achieving an AUC value of 88.6%, an accuracy of 82.1%, a sensitivity of 100% and a specificity of 78.2%. The proposed model represents a promising non-invasive procedure for the SLN status prediction in clinically negative patients.

Transfer learning approach based on computed tomography images for predicting late xerostomia after radiotherapy in patients with oropharyngeal cancer.

Background and purpose: Although the latest breakthroughs in radiotherapy (RT) techniques have led to a decrease in adverse event rates, these techniques are still associated with substantial toxicity, including xerostomia. Imaging biomarkers could be useful to predict the toxicity risk related to each individual patient. Our preliminary work aims to develop a radiomic-based support tool exploiting pre-treatment CT images to predict late xerostomia risk in 3 months after RT in patients with oropharyngeal cancer (OPC). Materials and methods: We performed a multicenter data collection. We enrolled 61 patients referred to three care centers in Apulia, Italy, out of which 22 patients experienced at least mild xerostomia 3 months after the end of the RT cycle. Pre-treatment CT images, clinical and dose features, and alcohol-smoking habits were collected. We proposed a transfer learning approach to extract quantitative imaging features from CT images by means of a pre-trained convolutional neural network (CNN) architecture. An optimal feature subset was then identified to train an SVM classifier. To evaluate the robustness of the proposed model with respect to different manual contouring practices on CTs, we repeated the same image analysis pipeline on "fake" parotid contours. Results: The best performances were achieved by the model exploiting the radiomic features alone. On the independent test, the model reached median AUC, accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity values of 81.17, 83.33, 71.43, and 90.91%, respectively. The model was robust with respect to diverse manual parotid contouring procedures. Conclusion: Radiomic analysis could help to develop a valid support tool for clinicians in planning radiotherapy treatment, by providing a risk score of the toxicity development for each individual patient, thus improving the quality of life of the same patient, without compromising patient care.