CASE REPORT article
Front. Immunol.
Sec. Immunological Memory
This article is part of the Research TopicDistinctive features of tissue-resident and circulating immune memory cellsView all 4 articles
Case Report: Rapid Recurrence of Psoriasiform Dermatitis upon Sequential Anti-PD-1 Therapy with Pembrolizumab and Tislelizumab with 3-Year Follow-up
Provisionally accepted
- 1Department of Dermatolog, Xiamen Chang Gung Hospital, Xiamen, China
- 2Zhejiang University School of Medicine Second Affiliated Hospital Department of Dermatology, Hangzhou, China
- 3Department of Dermatology, Zhejiang Hospital, Hangzhou, China
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Psoriasiform eruption is an uncommon cutaneous immune-related adverse event (irAE) associated with anti-PD-1 therapy, and its rapid recurrence upon switching to a different anti-PD-1 agent is a scarcely documented phenomenon. We report the case of a 59-year-old man with stage IIB lung adenocarcinoma who developed a pruritic, scaly eruption after his fourth cycle of pembrolizumab. Histopathological examination confirmed a diagnosis of grade 2 psoriasiform dermatitis. The initial episode resolved with systemic corticosteroids. However, upon switching anti-PD-1 therapy to tislelizumab, a similar but more widespread eruption recurred rapidly within a week. The recurrence was successfully managed with corticosteroids and antihistamines, and the anti-PD-1 therapy was subsequently discontinued. During the 3-year follow-up after discontinuation, the patient's skin lesions resolved completely with no recurrence, and no tumor progression was observed. The reduced latency of psoriasiform dermatitis recurrence upon anti-PD-1 inhibitor rechallenge suggests a memory T cell–driven immune response. It also highlights that such irAEs may reflect a class-effect of PD-1 inhibitors and can be effectively managed. In this case, tumor progression was not observed after treatment cessation, although causality cannot be inferred.
Keywords: Anti-PD-1 Therapy, drug rechallenge, immune checkpoint inhibitors, Immune-related adverse events, psoriasiformdermatitis
Received: 04 Dec 2025; Accepted: 11 Feb 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Chi, Li, Cai and Tang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Sui-Qing Cai
Zhuangli Tang
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