Background: Patients with advanced salivary gland malignancies (SGCs) have few therapy options. Although results from newly published trials suggest that checkpoint inhibition may be useful in a subgroup of patients, there are no clear criteria for PD-L1 score in SGCs. Chemotherapy benefits were observed to be limited, with a dismal prognosis in unresectable and high-grade SGC. Immunotherapies have demonstrated extraordinary efficacy in a variety of cancers, including non-small cell lung cancer and malignant melanoma. Anti-PD-1 antibody pembrolizumab has been shown to have potent anti-tumor action in a number of clinical trials.
Case presentation: We report a unique case of advanced high grade mucoepidermoid carcinoma of the parotid salivary gland after Pembrolizumab treatment as a first line therapy. The tumor was downstaged as a result of the pembrolizumab treatment, allowing for a successful surgical excision with no facial nerve sacrifice and no major neoadjuvant treatment adverse effects, and the final specimen pathology was tumor-free. In these types of malignancies, a similar technique resulted in a complete response (CR) radiologically and pathologically has never been discussed before.
Conclusions: In pretreated patients with high-grade salivary gland mucoepidermoid carcinoma, pembrolizumab showed good anticancer activity and provided a clinically, radiologically, and pathological response with a viable treatment choice. More research is needed to bring Pembrolizumab to the front-line of treatment. The time and duration of medication should be compared to the time required for surgery in these investigations.
Keywords: Complete response (CR); Pembrolizumab; Salivary gland cancers (SGCs): immunotherapy.
© 2022. The Author(s).