For patients with metastatic Merkel cell carcinoma, a rare and aggressive form of skin cancer associated with poor survival, avelumab may soon offer a new therapeutic option.
According to subgroup analysis of efficacy presented at the 2017 ASCO- SITC Clinical Immuno-Oncology Symposium, avelumab monotherapy showed durable antitumor activity across all evaluable subgroups of patients with chemotherapy-refractory metastatic Merkel cell carcinoma.
No predictive biomarker with clear clinical utility was identified, but there was a trend of higher response in patients with PD-L1_positive versus PD-L1_negative tumors, the researchers reported.