Role of Immunotherapy in the Treatment of Squamous Cell Carcinoma of the Anal Canal.

Anal cancer is a rare malignancy for which cisplatin with 5-fluorouracil is the recommended treatment for patients with metastatic disease. Because most cases of anal cancer are linked to prior infection with oncogenic strands of the human papillomavirus, immunotherapeutic approaches have been of great interest in the development of new treatments for this virally driven tumor. This article reviews the early successes of anti-PD-1 therapies and adoptive T-cell therapies for metastatic anal cancer as a potential foundation for novel combination immunotherapy trials in the future.