First report on two cases of pleomorphic dermal sarcoma successfully treated with immune checkpoint inhibitors

Sebastian Klein; Oana-Diana Persa; Cornelia Mauch; Ka-Won Noh; Roberto Pappesch; Svenja Wagener-Ryczek; Reinhard Buettner; Alexander Quaas; Doris Helbig

doi:10.1080/2162402X.2019.1665977

First report on two cases of pleomorphic dermal sarcoma successfully treated with immune checkpoint inhibitors

Oncoimmunology. 2019 Sep 20;8(12):e1665977. doi: 10.1080/2162402X.2019.1665977. eCollection 2019.

Authors

Sebastian Klein^{1

2}, Oana-Diana Persa³, Cornelia Mauch³, Ka-Won Noh¹, Roberto Pappesch¹, Svenja Wagener-Ryczek¹, Reinhard Buettner¹, Alexander Quaas¹, Doris Helbig³

Affiliations

¹ Institute of Pathology, University Hospital Cologne, Cologne, Germany.
² Else Kröner Forschungskolleg Clonal Evolution in Cancer, University Hospital Cologne, Cologne, Germany.
³ Department of Dermatology, University Hospital Cologne, Cologne, Germany.

Abstract

Pleomorphic dermal sarcoma (PDS) is one of the most common sarcoma of the skin. Currently, limited treatment options exist for advanced stages of the disease. While immune checkpoint inhibitors (CPIs) have revolutionized cancer treatment options-their efficacy in PDS has not been explored yet. Here, we present two advanced PDS cases that showed response to anti-PD-1 therapy. Patient A had a locally metastasized PDS and reached a complete remission of the disease after eight cycles of Pembrolizumab. Patient B developed an inoperable relapse of PDS with a complete remission of the disease 4 months after treatment with Pembrolizumab in combination with radiotherapy. To our knowledge, this is the first report of two individuals with advanced PDS that successfully underwent anti-PD1 treatment. By comparing the immune micromilieu to a previously published cohort, we show that the two cases are representative for PDS tumors - potentially making these results more generalizable.

Keywords: PD-1 inhibition; Pembrolizumab; Pleomorphic dermal sarcoma (PDS); immunotherapy; sarcoma of the skin.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

Grants and funding

This work was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft through the [SFB829] (Z4 to Doris Helbig and Cornelia Mauch) and the Else Kröner-Fresenius-Stiftung [EKFS-2014-A06 and 2016_Kolleg.19].