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Treatment for metastatic esophageal squamous cancer mirrors treatment for metastatic gastric cancer, but beyond first-line fluorinated pyrimidine/platinum-based chemotherapy, there are limited therapeutic options.
Japanese investigators now report results of an industry-sponsored, multicenter, phase II trial of the immune checkpoint inhibitor nivolumab — the human monoclonal antibody that targets programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1) — in 64 patients with chemotherapy-refractory disease. Nivolumab was administered at a dose of 3 mg/kg every 2 weeks. Most patients (68%) had received ≥3 regimens of chemotherapy, 83% were male, 94% had current or prior alcohol use, and 68% had prior esophagectomy.
At a median follow-up of 10.8 months, the respo…