Recurrent Metastatic Penile Cancer Patient with Positive PD-L1 Expression Obtained Significant Benefit from Immunotherapy: A Case Report and Literature Review

Xiangyu Su; Jing Zhang; Chenchun Fu; Mingzhe Xiao; Cailian Wang

doi:10.2147/OTT.S231258

Recurrent Metastatic Penile Cancer Patient with Positive PD-L1 Expression Obtained Significant Benefit from Immunotherapy: A Case Report and Literature Review

Onco Targets Ther. 2020 Apr 21:13:3319-3324. doi: 10.2147/OTT.S231258. eCollection 2020.

Authors

Xiangyu Su¹, Jing Zhang², Chenchun Fu¹, Mingzhe Xiao³, Cailian Wang¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Oncology, Zhongda Hospital, School of Medicine, Southeast University, Nanjing, Jiangsu, People's Republic of China.
² Department of Oncology, The Second People's Hospital of Taizhou City, Taizhou, Zhejiang, People's Republic of China.
³ The Medical Department, 3D Medicines Inc., Shanghai, People's Republic of China.

Abstract

Background: Penile squamous cell carcinoma (PSCC) bears poor prognosis due to its rarity and limited treatment options, especially after failure of standard treatments. Effective therapeutic options were desperately needed.

Case presentation: We report a recurrent metastatic PSCC patient with positive programmed death ligand 1 (PD-L1) expression (≥10%) and tumor mutation burden (TMB) of 8.87 (Muts/Mb) who obtained significant response to immunotherapy, with progression-free survival (PFS) exceeding 10 months.

Conclusion: This is the first case presenting remarkable response to immunotherapy in a Chinese PSCC patient. The remarkable response might be associated with PD-L1 expression, indicating that PD-L1 expression could be a promising biomarker for immunotherapy in PSCC. TMB ranking may also contribute to patient selection. However, large clinical trials are needed to validate these notions.

Keywords: PD-L1; PSCC; Penile squamous cell carcinoma; biomarker; immunotherapy.

Publication types

Case Reports

Grants and funding

This work was supported by the Postgraduate Research & Practice Innovation Program of Jiangsu Province [grant number KYCX18_0180]. The funding sources had no role in the study design, data collection, data analysis, data interpretation, or writing of the report.