Case Report
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2020. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Clin Cases. Jan 6, 2020; 8(1): 97-102
Published online Jan 6, 2020. doi: 10.12998/wjcc.v8.i1.97
Pembrolizumab - emerging treatment of pulmonary sarcomatoid carcinoma: A case report
Emanuela Cimpeanu, Jibran Ahmed, Wahib Zafar, Adreana DeMarinis, Svetoslav S Bardarov, Shamim Salman, Dennis Bloomfield
Emanuela Cimpeanu, Adreana DeMarinis, Dennis Bloomfield, Department of Internal Medicine, Richmond University Medical Center, Staten Island, NY 10310, United States
Jibran Ahmed, Wahib Zafar, Department of Hematology and Medical Oncology, Westchester Medical Center, Valhalla, NY 10595, United States
Svetoslav S Bardarov, Department of Pathology, Richmond University Medical Center, Staten Island, NY 10310, United States
Shamim Salman, Department of Hematology and Medical Oncology, Richmond University Medical Center, Staten Island, NY 10310, United States
Dennis Bloomfield, Department of Clinical Research, Richmond University Medical Center, Staten Island, NY 10310, United States
Author contributions: Cimpeanu E cared for the patient, conceived and designed the case report and wrote most of the manuscript; Jibran A and Zafar W cared for the patient, conceived and designed the case report and wrote part of the manuscript; DeMarinis A cared for the patient and wrote part of the manuscript; Bardarov SS provided the pathology data as well as the histology images and their description and also revised the manuscript; Salman S cared for the patient, conceived and designed the case report and made critical revisions to the manuscript; Bloomfield D conceived and designed the case report and made multiple critical revisions to the manuscript.
Informed consent statement: Consent to publish was obtained from the patient in the study.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
CARE Checklist (2016) statement: The authors have read the CARE Checklist (2016), and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the CARE Checklist (2016).
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Emanuela Cimpeanu, MD, Doctor, Resident Physician, Department of Internal Medicine, Richmond University Medical Center, 355 Bard Ave, Staten Island, NY 10310, United States. emma_ver@yahoo.com
Received: September 11, 2019
Peer-review started: September 11, 2019
First decision: October 24, 2019
Revised: November 5, 2019
Accepted: November 14, 2019
Article in press: November 14, 2019
Published online: January 6, 2020
Processing time: 117 Days and 22.2 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: Pulmonary sarcomatoid carcinoma (PSC) is classified as a rare, aggressive subtype of non-small-cell lung cancer. In recent years, pembrolizumab, a humanized monoclonal IgG-kappa isotype antibody against the programmed death-1 receptor, has become the first-line treatment for NSCLE with programmed death-ligand-1 (PD-L1) expression on at least 50% of tumor cells. We report the case of an elderly man diagnosed with invasive PSC with PD-L1 greater than 50%. The patient experienced a highly positive response to pembrolizumab. The recommendation to treat PSC with pembrolizumab is supported by the small number of published papers available in the English literature.