Loading
Everything in development, the medicines held by this cancer's subtypes, the open problems and what is being done about them, the roadmaps, and what changed on this record.
What is in development for Merkel cell carcinoma, drawn from the whole corpus: 14 items. Drugs are grouped by the most advanced trial phase they have reached anywhere; approved treatments sit under standard of care. Technologies are the methods being tested for this cancer, trials are the studies recorded here, and ideas are proposals not yet in a trial.
Half of patients do not respond to PD-1 blockade and have no effective second line.
Immunosuppressed patients: high incidence, poor outcomes, contraindications to immunotherapy.
No validated adjuvant standard yet despite ADMEC-O.
Rarity limits trial size; registries (e.g. Seattle) carry much of the evidence.
Nothing recorded yet.
Nothing recorded yet.
Also on OnCo: Find a trial · Expert centres.
Three PD-1 pathway antibodies are approved for this disease and none has ever been compared with another; the choice is made on availability and schedule rather than on evidence.
The adjuvant question rests on a phase 2 trial whose hazard ratio crosses one and whose survival data are not mature, and the phase 3 that would settle it has not reported.
Dated changes read from the records linked to this cancer: approvals, regulatory steps, reported trials, guideline versions and milestones. Newest first; no date is inferred.
On EdgeAll 18 changes by month →When this page itself was last checked or edited.
Objective response in 54.
Objective response 54.5 per cent in 101 chemotherapy-naive patients, median progression-free survival 16.0 months and 63 per cent alive at three years.
Merkel cell carcinoma
Metastatic or recurrent locally advanced Merkel cell carcinoma
ADMEC-O randomised 179 patients with completely resected Merkel cell carcinoma 2 to 1 to a year of nivolumab or to observation. Disease-free survival was 85 per cent at 12 months and 84 per cent at 24 with nivolumab against 77 and 73 per cent with observation, a hazard ratio of 0.58 whose 95 per cent confidence interval, 0.30 to 1.12, crosses one; the authors state it as an absolute risk reduction of 9 and 10 percentage points. Grade 3 or 4 adverse events occurred in 42 per cent against 11 per cent. Overall survival had ten events against six in a group half the size and is not mature. This is a phase 2 signal in a rare disease, not a proven standard, and the randomised phase 3 that would settle it, STAMP, has not reported.