News & Publications
The latest news and publications about Merkel cell carcinoma and merkelcell.org.
It began eight years ago, when a newly published scientific paper caught Dr. Denise Galloway’s eye. The paper described the discovery of a new virus, Merkel cell polyomavirus, that drives the majority of cases of Merkel cell carcinoma, a rare but aggressive skin cancer. Within days of that publica...
Read more →MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Dr. Nghiem: Merkel cell carcinoma (MCC) is about 30 times less common than malignant melanoma, but about 3 times more likely to kill a patient than a melanoma. There is no FDA-approved therapy for this cancer & c...
Read more →Patients with Merkel-cell carcinoma, a rare type of skin cancer that develops in the top layer of the skin in Merkel cells, could be treated with immunotherapy, new research suggests. Paul Nghiem (Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA) and colleagues t...
Read more →Condense, if you will, the 50,000 years of cancer’s recorded history in a time span of but a half-century. If it were 50 years old, human beings would know very little about its first 49 years, except that it killed men and women with the ease of a scythe slicing through wheat. About a year ago, m...
Read more →NEW ORLEANS -- More than half of patients with advanced Merkel cell carcinoma had durable responses to treatment with the immune checkpoint inhibitor pembrolizumab (Keytruda), according to results of a small clinical trial. Objective responses occurred in 14 of 26 patients with previously untreated ...
Read more →Merkel cell carcinoma (MCC) is a rare, aggressive type of skin cancer. It is less common than melanoma, but patients are three times more likely to die from it. Dr. Paul Nghiem, head of the Division of Dermatology, is leading a clinical trial of an immunotherapy drug, pembrolizumab, where just over...
Read more →NEW ORLEANS, LA — The first-ever positive clinical trial in a rare skin cancer, Merkelcell carcinoma (MCC), has shown one of the highest response rates yet seen with immunotherapy. The trial was conducted in 26 patients who received pembrolizumab (Keytruda, Merck), 14 of whom responded (56%), ...
Read more →First, the cancer was on the bridge of his nose. Surgery took care of that. Then, there was a tumor under his jaw: more surgery, plus eight weeks of radiation. A few months later, a routine scan caught another in his brain. More surgery and radiation. Several months more, and two tumors popped up un...
Read more →New Orleans, LA, April 19, 2016—Frequent and durable responses occurred in patients with advanced Merkel cell carcinoma (MCC) after first-line treatment with pembrolizumab, a humanized IgG4 anti-PD-1 monoclonal antibody, according to data presented here at the American Association for Cancer Resea...
Read more →In a clinical trial of the immunotherapy drug pembrolizumab, half of 25 patients with a rare type of virus-linked skin cancer called Merkel cell carcinoma experienced substantial tumor shrinkage lasting nearly three times as long, on average, than with conventional chemotherapy. Several patients had...
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