Pembrolizumab in Patients with Advanced Metastatic Germ Cell Tumors.

CONCLUSION: Overall, pembrolizumab was safe and had limited antitumor activity in these patients. In the advanced, metastatic setting, tumor profiling to understand the mechanisms of resistance to immunotherapy and innovative clinical trials to identify efficacious combination regimens rather than off-label use of pembrolizumab are warranted. DISCUSSION: Germ cell tumors are associated with a diverse histopathology and clinical prognosis. Approximately 20%-30% of patients with metastatic germ cell tumors have disease resistant to standard chemotherapy [1], and 15%-20% of these tumors are incurable with the available treatments [2]. The optimal therapeutic approach for advanced germ cell tumors has not been established, and thus, there is a need to identify novel effective therapies. Pembrolizumab is a programmed cell death 1 (PD-1)-blocking antibody that is indicated for the treatment of the following metastatic tumor types: melanoma, non-small cell lung cancer, small cell lung cancer, head and neck squamous cell cancer, Hodgkin lymphoma, gastric cancer, gastroesophageal junction adenocarcinoma expressing PD-L1, esophageal cancer, cervical cancer, hepatocellular carcinoma, Merkel cell carcinoma, renal cell carcinoma, and endometrial carcinoma. It is also indicated for patients with microsatellite instability-high (MSI-H) or mismatch repair-deficient solid tumors and unresectable or metastatic tumor mutational burden-high (≥10 mutations/megabase) solid tumors [3]. Ou...
Source: The Oncologist - Category: Cancer & Oncology Authors: Tags: Oncologist Source Type: research