Real-World Experience with Pembrolizumab Treatment in Patients with Heavily Treated Recurrent Gynecologic Malignancies
We evaluated the efficacy and safety of pembrolizumab in patients with recurrent gynecologic cancers in real-world practice. We conducted a retrospective, single-institution study of patients with recurrent gynecologic malignancies treated with pembrolizumab. The primary endpoints were the objective response rate (ORR) and safety. Thirty-one patients treated with pembrolizumab were included. The primary disease sites were the uterine cervix (n=18), ovaries (n=8), and uterine corpus (n=5). Fifteen of the 31 patients (48%) had an Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group performance status of ≥2. The median number of prior chemotherapy lines was 2 (range, 1-6), and 14 of 31 patients (45%) had received ≥ 3 prior lines of chemotherapy. The overall ORR was 22.6%: specifically, 22.3% (4 of 18 patients), 12.5% (1 of 8 patients), and 40% (2 of 5 patients) for cervical, ovarian, and endometrial cancers, respectively. During a median follow-up of 4.7 months (range, 0.2-35.3), the median time to response was 1.9 months (range, 1.4-5.7). The median duration of response was not reached (range, 8.8-not reached). The median progression-free survival was 2.5 months (95% confidence interval, 1.7-not reached). Adverse events occurred in 20 patients (64.5%), and only 3 (9.7%) were grade ≥3. There was one case of suspicious treatment-related mortality, apart from which most adverse events were manageable. In real-world practice, pembrolizumab was feasible and effective in heavily treated recurrent gynecologic cancer patients with poor performance status who may not be eligible for enrollment in clinical trials.
