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Neil D. Gross, MD, on Clinical Implications of Recent Findings on Cemiplimab in Cutaneous Squamous Cell Carcinoma

Posted: Thursday, September 15, 2022

Neil D. Gross, MD, of The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, discusses what it could mean, going forward, for patients with stage II–IV (M0) cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma who may benefit from neoadjuvant cemiplimab-rwlc, which was shown to be active in a phase II study and may enable function-preserving surgery in some cases.



Transcript

In this study, we observed complete pathologic responses to four doses of neoadjuvant cemiplimab in patients with stage II to IV resectable cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma. This study confirmed the pilot data from a single institution and was published in the New England Journal of Medicine. There were toxicities observed in this study. The most common toxicity was fatigue, which occurred in 30% of patients. Patients also experienced rash and diarrhea. These are all in line with what we've seen in other studies exploring immune checkpoint inhibitors in this population. In general, these toxicities were well managed, and it was a minority of patients who had immune-related toxicities. There were four deaths in the study, and I think it's worth discussing those in some depth. One patient had an exacerbation of congestive heart failure. She was 93 years old and had extensive medical comorbidities. This patient died before surgery. We had two patients who died of myocardial infarctions before surgery, also elderly patients with extensive medical comorbidities. And we had one patient who died after surgery from COVID pneumonia. In general, though, this was well tolerated among the cohort. The median age of this patient population was 73, the oldest patient was 93, and majority were white male patients with advanced stage disease, so a very typical cohort for advanced cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma. That being said, the neoadjuvant approach offered significant benefit to this patient population. This study compared to the pilot study allowed for conforming the surgical margins to tailor the patients' needs. This study, compared to the neoadjuvant trial, allowed tailoring the surgical approach to better the patient. So patients could have a smaller surgery as long as it was oncologically appropriate, as determined by the local investigators.  This study only includes short-term data. This is pathologic response rates. The data cut-off was December 2021, so with 9.7 months of followup, we've seen no recurrences. But the long-term data are still maturing. We don't know the impact on survival. We don't know the impact on quality of life, but I suspect it'll be substantial. In this study, there were patients who were spared orbital exenteration, for example, because of responses to neoadjuvant therapy. And we've seen in the pilot study, and this study as well, significant opportunities for improvement in patient quality of life with this approach. There are many unanswered questions that are raised by this trial, and it's exciting opportunity to think about those and plan those for the future. One question is, what is the ideal number of doses before surgery? In this study, we used four doses. Another question is adjuvant therapy. Which patients can be spared adjuvant radiation? Which patients can be spared surgery? We don't know. And finally, we don't have biomarkers to tell us which patients will respond to treatment. In this study, tumor mutational burden, PDL-1 status were not predictive of response, but we hope with a larger cohort and looking at serologic markers that we may have a better idea of who will and who will not respond.


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