ICB Combination Working for SEF!
This is very important!
There has been a new publication released of two case reports of SEF patients that have shown clinical benefit from an ICB combination of Ipilimumab and Nivolumab. The paper can be found here:
https://ascopubs.org/doi/abs/10.1200/PO.20.00201
This is very promising and should be discussed with your oncologist. These are the first examples I am aware of where systemic therapy is working for metastatic SEF!
I wrote about this possibility in my letter to patients (excerpt below), and the trial below is still recruiting and would be one way to receive this therapy.
Immune Checkpoint Blockades (ICBs)
There are also other systemic immunotherapies, such as immune checkpoint blockades (ICBs). They work by knocking down immune checkpoints (things that effectively tell your immune system to leave the cell alone). These ICBs did not prove to be very effective in many sarcoma or cancers like SEF as monotherapy, but they are being tried in combinations that are beginning to show efficacy in similar solid tumors and may be worth exploring in a trial setting such as:
https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04416568?cond=Epithelioid+Sarcoma&draw=2&rank=6
I’m very pleased to have found this article with the help of Google Alerts the day it was published. I wrote about his also in my letter:
Set up Google Alerts:
Google is a great free resource that can connect you to all the relevant news and research articles about your cancer. Use their alert system to automatically alert you to news and publications on specific keywords. These alerts can give you the most up to date information on research and clinical developments, and takes a lot of the research burden off of you. For example, I get alerts almost daily based on the following keywords:
“Sclerosing Epithelioid Fibrosarcoma” “Soft-Tissue Sarcoma” “Advanced Soft-Tissue Sarcoma” “Immunotherapy for Soft Tissue Sarcoma” “CD24” “CD276” “B7H3” “MUC4” “NOTCH”
If you are reading this, I would urge you to send this publication to your oncologist and inquire about this trial or other ways to consider starting this therapy. This is huge news! If I could go back in time just one year to when we were searching for hopeful therapy options, I would have been elated after reading this paper. It’s unfortunate that we weren’t able to try this combination for Rucker, but I sincerely hope this brings you hope and inspiration that something new out there is proving to help in the fight against SEF!
Sincerely,
John