News & Publications

Understanding mechanisms of late/acquired cancer immunotherapy resistance is critical to improve outcomes; cellular immunotherapy trials offer a means to probe complex tumor–immune interfaces through defined T cell/antigen interactions. We treated two patients with metastatic Merkel cell carcinoma...

Background: Merkel cell carcinoma (MCC) is a rare and aggressive cutaneous malignancy. In the advanced setting, MCC is often treated with immune checkpoint inhibitors such as anti-PD-1/PD-L1 antibodies. X-ray radiation therapy (XRT) is commonly used for palliation. There is an unmet need for new tre...

On September 10, 2018 in Seattle, over 280 patients, family members, clinicians, scientists, and trainees from across the United States gathered for the 13th annual Merkel cell carcinoma Dinner Meeting. They enjoyed a lovely buffet dinner, music, lab tours and a presentation on the status of resea...

Background: Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) are the treatment of choice for several cancers and can be associated with remarkable clinical benefit, but can also cause serious immune-related adverse events (irAEs). Management of rare and severe irAEs is challenged by an incomplete knowledge of th...

PURPOSE: Merkel cell carcinoma (MCC) is an aggressive skin cancer with neuroendocrine differentiation. There is an unmet need for MCC-specific blood-based surrogate biomarkers of tumor burden; circulating cell-free micro(mi)RNA may serve this purpose. EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN: Expression of miR-375 was q...

The 2018 Annual ASCO meeting was held in Chicago, IL between June 1 - 5th. The Annual Meeting brings together oncology professionals from around the world to discuss state-of-the-art treatment modalities, new therapies, and ongoing controversies in the field. Dr. Paul Nghiem presented on the, "Tw...

On June 13, 2018, Rebecca Voelker, of JAMA Medical News and Perspectives, published an article discussing the rise in interest and incidence of Merkel cell carcinoma. Physicians including Dr. Michael Hori, and Dr. Paul emphasize the importance of receiving appropriate care during diagnostic workup....

Before 2016, patients with advanced Merkel cell carcinoma — a rare and extremely deadly skin cancer — had no good treatment options to extend their lives more than a few months. Then, with two pivotal trials, everything changed. On Monday, investigators presented new, long-term data from these t...

Background: Merkel cell carcinoma (MCC) is a rare but aggressive neuroendocrine skin cancer. The estimated 5-year survival of patients with metastatic disease is approximately 14%. Cytotoxic chemotherapy is associated with a modest median progression-free survival (PFS) of only 3 months. In recent s...

PURPOSE: The causative agent of most cases of Merkel cell carcinoma (MCC) has been identified as the Merkel cell polyomavirus (MCV). MCV encoded T-antigens (Tags) are essential not only for virus-mediated tumorigenesis but also for maintaining MCC cell lines in vitro. MCV Tags are thus an appealing ...