Anaplastic thyroid cancer is a notoriously aggressive malignancy with a dismal prognosis, typically associated with a median overall survival of less than one year. Therapeutic alternatives are particularly limited for patients without actionable driver mutations. Here, we report a case of BRAF V600E wild-type, PD-L1-positive (tumor proportion score of 80%) anaplastic thyroid cancer with residual/relapsed disease following surgery and subsequent progression on multi-targeted tyrosine kinase inhibitor therapy. The patient was thereafter treated with a combination of pembrolizumab, nab-paclitaxel and carboplatin, resulting in a sustained near-complete response lasting over 30 months, accompanied by a manageable safety profile. The favorable response in this case suggests that further evaluation of this triplet regimen could be considered for anaplastic thyroid cancer, though this remains a speculative premise requiring validation. Further studies are also needed to clarify the underlying mechanisms of this combination and to identify predictive biomarkers for patient selection.
Chen et al. (Thu,) studied this question.