News & Publications
The latest news and publications about Merkel cell carcinoma and merkelcell.org.
Merkel cell carcinoma (MCC) is a rare and aggressive skin cancer associated with advanced age and immunosuppression. Over the past decade, an association has been discovered between MCC and either integration of the Merkel cell polyomavirus, which likely drives tumorigenesis, or somatic mutations ow...
Read more →Methods: Pretreatment FFPE tumor specimens (n = 26) were stained for CD8, PD-L1, and PD-1 by immunohistochemistry/immunofluorescence (IHC/IF), and the density and distribution of positive cells was quantified to determine the associations with anti-PD-1 response. Multiplex IF was used to test a ...
Read more →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...
Read more →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...
Read more →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...
Read more →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...
Read more →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...
Read more →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 ...
Read more →BACKGROUND: Merkel cell carcinoma (MCC) incidence rates are rising and strongly age-associated, relevant for an aging population. OBJECTIVE: Determine MCC incidence in the United States and project incident cases through the year 2025. METHODS: Registry data were obtained from the SEER-18 Database, ...
Read more →Aim: The aim of this article was to provide worldwide, population-based incidence rates for Merkel cell carcinoma (MCC). Methods: We included 11,576 cases from 20 countries for time trend analyses (1990e2007) and 11,028 cases (2.5 billion person-years) from 21 countries for the period 2003e2007 extr...
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