A case report: A new promising treatment for pulmonary sarcomatoid carcinoma - Tislelizumab and Anlotinib combined with local radiotherapy

Heliyon. 2023 Nov 2;9(11):e21902. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e21902. eCollection 2023 Nov.

Abstract

Background: Pulmonary sarcomatoid carcinoma (PSC) is a rare pathological type of non-small cell lung cancer, only occurs in 0.1%-0.4 % of lung cancer patients. It has a poor prognosis and shows low response to conventional chemotherapy. Target therapy, immunotherapy, and other new approaches are worth exploring in PSC. Recently, patients with MET ex14 skipping mutation can obtain good therapeutic efficacy through target therapy. But there was no definitive treatment for patients without this special mutation.

Case description: Now, we report a female PSC patient without MET ex14 skipping mutation in the cT4N2M1 stage treated with Tislelizumab and Anlotinib obtained remarkable effect for more than 2 years. Significantly, in this case, immunotherapy and antiangiogenic therapy continued to prolong the survival time of more than 10 months for the patient after being treated by local radiotherapy. This is the first case that reported the effectiveness of immunotherapy and antiangiogenic therapy combined with local radiotherapy in treating PSC and achieved more long-term clinical efficacy than other treatments.

Conclusions: Thus, immunotherapy and antiangiogenic therapy combined with local radiotherapy may bring new hope to advanced PSC patients and is worth conducting further research. It provided an effective reference for the treatment of advanced PSC patients without METex14 skipping mutation. Moreover, this case also demonstrated the synergistic effect of radiotherapy and immunotherapy.

Keywords: Anlotinib; Antiangiogenic therapy; Immunotherapy; Pulmonary sarcomatoid carcinoma; Radiotherapy; Tislelizumab.

Publication types

  • Case Reports