Dr Janice Mehnert speaks to ecancer about EA6174 phase III clinical trial.

It is the first randomised study to evaluate adjuvant pembrolizumab versus observation in patients with resected stage II–IV MCC.

Merkel cell carcinoma (MCC) is a rare but highly aggressive skin cancer with a high risk of recurrence after surgery.

While immune checkpoint inhibitors have transformed outcomes in metastatic MCC, their role in the adjuvant setting has remained unclear.

In this study adjuvant pembrolizumab demonstrated clinically meaningful improvement in distant metastasis-free survival and a favourable trend toward reducing recurrence risk in resected MCC.

Dr Mehnert says that these findings support the potential use of pembrolizumab as the first adjuvant immunotherapy option in this rare cancer, pending overall survival results.

To find out more read the news story here.