Favorable outcome of a histiocytic sarcoma patient treated with immune checkpoint inhibitor: a case report

Histiocytic sarcoma (HS) is an extremely rare malignancy in which there has been no standard treatment approach. Some preclinical studies have provided rationales for the application of immunotherapy in advanced HS. The authors reported a case of a 61-year-old patient with metastatic HS who had a rapid progression on ifosfamide, carboplatin, and etoposide chemotherapy. The authors performed PD-L1 testing, which showed a strong positivity in 90% of tumor cells. The patient was then treated with pembrolizumab 200 mg every 3 weeks. He refused palliative radiotherapy. A dramatic response in all sites was recorded on the PET-CT scan after three cycles. He was maintained on pembrolizumab, reaching over 30 months without disease progression. Recent molecular data suggests there could be a role of immunotherapy in HS. In our patient, the disease was refractory to chemotherapy and pembrolizumab has been given based on the strong PD-L1 expression. Response to immunotherapy has also been recorded in several cases with malignant histiocytic neoplasm. Immunotherapy might bring sustained disease remission in PD-L1 high expression HS and further studies evaluating the role of immune checkpoint inhibitor in this disease are warranted.