Pan-cancer telemedicine registry of immunotherapy responses in patients with structural variations in PD-1 ligands

Summary: 

Cancer cells evolve and develop protective mechanisms to hide themselves from cancer killing T-cells. Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs), block these protective mechanisms by targeting PD-1/PD-L1, unhiding cancer cells so that they can be killed by T-cells. Immune checkpoint inhibitors have revolutionized the treatment of various solid and blood cancers by producing durable responses and improved survival in many cancers. However, there are limited number of biomarkers that predict response to PD-1 ICIs including PD-L1 expression, tumor mutational burden (TMB), and microsatellite instability (MSI-H). Thus, there is a need to identify novel biomarkers that may help predict responses to PD-1 ICIs. The study team has identified a number of genomic alterations in PD-L1 and PD-L2 that may be novel predictive biomarkers for response to PD-1 ICIs. This phase II telemedicine trial will investigate whether the genomic alterations in PD-L1 and PD-L2 can help predict a response to pembrolizumab, an ICI, in any cancer patients with these alterations.

Trial Registration: ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT02090530