News & Publications

In this study of 40 patients from Australia with metastatic Merkel cell carcinoma, the authors found that about one third of patients had their MCC return within the first year of stopping immunotherapy. They also noted that if therapy extended longer, there appeared to be more protection from recur...

This study from Australia provides useful insight on the outcomes of more than 500 Merkel cell carcinoma patients in a place that relies heavily on radiation therapy. The risk of recurrence is very similar to what we see in the US and thus provides more confidence in current US-based data. This stud...

At the time of diagnosis, MCC is known to have spread from the primary site to other locations in over one third of cases. The best way to detect such spread is still debated, but major guidelines now suggest that a PET-CT scan is one preferred method. In this study, the authors analyzed 135 MCC pat...

This case study looks at 9 patients who developed cardiac metastases, a tricky situation on which very little data is currently available. We hope that by describing 9 cases, this will provide an easily accessible road map for clinicians around the world when this difficult situation arises. In man...

Researchers at Tel Aviv University found evidence that exercise can induce metabolic changes that decrease the growth and spread of cancer. They hypothesize that intense exercise leads to muscles using up glucose stores leaving behind very little energy sources for cancer cells to use. Regardless, t...

This observational study of melanoma patients found that high fiber intake was correlated with a better response to immunotherapy treatment. This benefit was most pronounced in patients who had high fiber intake and did not use probiotic supplements. While future studies will provide additional insi...

Congratulations to these Italian authors who carried out an interesting survey of Merkel cell carcinoma management by over 300 ‘front-line’ physicians from the region of Italy that includes Rome. Among the 10 figures included in the survey, they depict the common dilemmas faced by most physicia...

’Adjuvant’ therapy is given to patients when there is no clear evidence of cancer, but the goal is to decrease the risk the cancer will come back following initial therapy. In this meeting abstract presented at the European Society for Medical Oncology by Dr. Juergen Becker, the authors report e...

This review discusses an ever-expanding set of options to study MCC using cells and mouse models. These tools are increasingly important as the number of candidate therapies for MCC is expanding and the field needs to prioritize which ones to take forward into human clinical trials.

MCC has a high chance (about 60%) of responding to immune therapy with PD-1 blocking agents. Remarkably, the chance that virus-negative MCC tumors will respond to immune therapy is the same as for virus-positive tumors, although the targets the immune system ‘sees’ are very different in nature.