Pulmonary blastoma treatment response to anti-PD-1 therapy: a rare case report and literature review

Front Oncol. 2023 Apr 12:13:1146204. doi: 10.3389/fonc.2023.1146204. eCollection 2023.

Abstract

Pulmonary blastoma (PB) is a rare and invasive malignancy of the lungs with a poor prognosis. Although the mainstay treatment of PB is surgery, and radiotherapy and chemotherapy have been reported, no standard therapy exists for patients inoperable in advanced stages. Moreover, little is known about driver mutation status and immunotherapy efficacy. This paper presents a male patient diagnosed with classic biphasic PB using CT-guided lung biopsy pathology and immunohistochemistry. The patient's symptoms included cough, chest pain, shortness of breath, hemoptysis, and hypodynamia. The primary focus of this paper is to discuss the impact of anti-PD-1 immunotherapy on PB. The patient experienced progression-free survival (PFS) of over 27 months following sintilimab second-line anti-PD-1 therapy. The patient has currently survived for nearly 40 months with a satisfactory quality of life.

Keywords: PD-1/PD-L1 axis; checkpoint inhibition; immunotherapy; pulmonary blastoma; sintilimab.

Publication types

  • Case Reports

Grants and funding

This study was supported by National K& D Program of China (2022YFC2304800), Guangzhou Medical Key Discipline (2021–2023, Tuberculosis), Guangzhou Key Research and Development Program (202206010061), and Guangzhou Science and Technology Planning Project (2023A03J0534).