Complete and Durable Response to Nivolumab in Recurrent Poorly Differentiated Pancreatic Neuroendocrine Carcinoma with High Tumor Mutational Burden

Abstract

Poorly differentiated pancreatic neuroendocrine carcinomas (NECs) are rare and aggressive malignancies with rapid disease progression and early widespread metastasis. Given histology similarity, they are commonly treated with platinum-based chemotherapy as small cell lung cancer (SCLC). However, no standard treatment has been established for recurrent or progressive disease. We present an Asian patient with recurrent poorly differentiated pancreatic NEC after curative surgery and adjuvant chemotherapy with cisplatin and etoposide. The tumor mutational burden (TMB) was high. The patient received chemotherapy combined with maintenance immunotherapy with nivolumab and achieved promising and durable response, suggesting TMB could be a biomarker to identify NEC patients for immune checkpoint inhibitor (ICI) treatment.

Keywords

• neuroendocrine carcinoma
• immunotherapy
• immune checkpoint inhibitor
• tumor mutational burden