CASE REPORT article
Front. Oncol.
Sec. Gastrointestinal Cancers: Hepato Pancreatic Biliary Cancers
Case Report: An exceptional response to a novel immunotherapy-based combination treatment for resected pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma with recurrence to the abdominal wall
Provisionally accepted
- University of Michigan Medical Center Rogel Cancer Center, Ann Arbor, United States
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Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is a difficult-to-treat cancer with a 5-year survival rate of only 13%. Intense chemotherapies are needed to control the disease. Surgical resection, if possible, is the only curative approach. However, recurrence rates are high. The inclusion of immune checkpoint inhibitors in treatment hasn’t shown benefit, most likely because of the cancer’s highly immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment (TME). Leukemia Inhibitory Factor (LIF) is a cytokine that contributes to this profound immunosuppression, which is thought to be at least partly mediated by pro-tumoral (M2-like) tumor-associated macrophages (TAMs). Those macrophages harbor LIF receptors on their surface. The addition of the anti-LIF antibody MSC-1 to a combination of anti-programmed death-ligand 1 (anti-PD-L1) and chemotherapy has shown encouraging preclinical results, successfully reversing pro-tumoral TAMs into anti-tumoral (M1-like) macrophages. Here, we report a patient with recurrent PDAC in the abdominal wall and peritoneum, that immediately went into complete remission after receiving an investigational treatment with MSC-1 and anti-PD-L1 combined with standard-of-care chemotherapy. We discuss immunological mechanisms that may have contributed to the impressive treatment response.
Keywords: anti-LIF combination immunochemotherapy, complete response, conversion of M2 to M1 macrophages, cutaneous/subcutaneous metastasis, PDAC
Received: 19 Jun 2025; Accepted: 04 Feb 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Enzler, Tweedy, Holmes and Lamps. 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: Thomas Enzler
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