Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) clinical practice guideline on immunotherapy for the treatment of nonmelanoma skin cancer

2022
Merkel Cell Carcinoma
BCC
CSCC
Society guidelines for the management of NMSC. Published in the Journal for ImmunoTherapy of Cancer, July 2022.
Author

Silk, Ann W and Barker, Christopher A and Bhatia, Shailender and Bollin, Kathryn B and Chandra, Sunandana and Eroglu, Zeynep and Gastman, Brian R and Kendra, Kari L and Kluger, Harriet and Lipson, Evan J and Madden, Kathleen and Miller, David M and Nghiem, Paul and Pavlick, Anna C and Puzanov, Igor and Rabinowits, Guilherme and Ruiz, Emily S and Sondak, Vernon K and Tavss, Edward A and Tetzlaff, Michael T and Brownell, Isaac

Published

July 27, 2022

Doi

10.1136/jitc-2021-004434

Abstract

Nonmelanoma skin cancers (NMSCs) are some of the most commonly diagnosed malignancies. In general, early-stage NMSCs have favorable outcomes; however, a small subset of patients develop resistant, advanced, or metastatic disease, or aggressive subtypes that are more challenging to treat successfully. Recently, immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) have been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the treatment of Merkel cell carcinoma (MCC), cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma (CSCC), and basal cell carcinoma (BCC). Although ICIs have demonstrated activity against NMSCs, the routine clinical use of these agents may be more challenging due to a number of factors including the lack of predictive biomarkers, the need to consider special patient populations, the management of toxicity, and the assessment of atypical responses. With the goal of improving patient care by providing expert guidance to the oncology community, the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) convened a multidisciplinary panel of experts to develop a clinical practice guideline (CPG). The expert panel drew on the published literature as well as their own clinical experience to develop recommendations for healthcare professionals on important aspects of immunotherapeutic treatment for NMSCs, including staging, biomarker testing, patient selection, therapy selection, post-treatment response evaluation and surveillance, and patient quality of life (QOL) considerations, among others. The evidence- and consensus-based recommendations in this CPG are intended to provide guidance to cancer care professionals treating patients with NMSCs.

Reference

Silk, Ann W, Christopher A Barker, Shailender Bhatia, Kathryn B Bollin, Sunandana Chandra, Zeynep Eroglu, Brian R Gastman, et al. 2022. "Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) Clinical Practice Guideline on Immunotherapy for the Treatment of Nonmelanoma Skin Cancer." Journal for ImmunoTherapy of Cancer 10 (7): e004434. https://doi.org/10.1136/jitc-2021-004434.