Response to immunotherapy in a patient with anaplastic thyroid cancer

作者：Luming Zheng, Ling Li, Qingqing He, Meng Wang, Yunhan Ma, Jian Zhu, Yanchen Li, Xiaokang Fu, Yaxuan Zhang · 发表于：Medicine · 年份：2021 · DOI：10.1097/md.0000000000026138 · 被引用次数：17 · 研究领域：Thyroid Cancer Diagnosis and Treatment、Cancer Immunotherapy and Biomarkers、Ferroptosis and cancer prognosis

RATIONALE: Anaplastic thyroid carcinoma (ATC) is an aggressive malignancy that is almost always fatal and lacks effective systemic treatment options. Current treatments of ATC include surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy, used in combination when possible. In the aspect of immunotherapy, the biomarker of TMB-H and MSI-H may suggest that patients benefit from pembrolizumab. Programmed cell death-ligand 1 (PD-L1) is highly expressed in ATC but has not been written into the guidelines or approved by the FDA as a biomarker for thyroid cancer immunotherapy. PATIENT CONCERNS: A 55-year-old woman was admitted to our hospital because of a slight right-sided neck enlargement in November 2019. DIAGNOSES: The clinical diagnosis was ATC, pT3bN0M0, and stage IVB. INTERVENTIONS: Oral administration of apatinib (250 mg 3 times daily) was initiated after surgery, but some unpleasant side effects emerged after 1 month of treatment. Next-generation sequencing revealed that the tumor harbored 2 mutations, HRAS p.Q61R and TP53 p.P278S, and PD-L1 staining was positive with a high expression. Thus, camrelizumab (programmed cell death protein 1 inhibitor) was combined with apatinib, and apatinib was changed to 250 mg once a day from March 2020. OUTCOMES: No adverse reactions were observed after the treatment immunotherapy combined with antiangiogenic drugs. Currently, the survival time of patients is more than 11 months, and the quality of life is not affected. CONCLUSION: This case suggests that i...