"The U.S. Food and Drug Administration yesterday granted accelerated approval to the checkpoint inhibitor Bavencio avelumab for the treatment of patients with metastatic Merkel cell carcinoma MCC httpsmerkelcell.org including those who have not received prior chemotherapy. Avelumab is the first FDAapproved treatment https for metastatic MCC and the first disease that the drug has ever been approved to treat. A rare and aggressive form of skin cancer MCC is  times less common than melanoma but on average it is about three times more likely to be deadly. Until now there were no systemic therapies approved by the Food and Drug Administration for this cancer and no approved therapies once the cancer had spread.  Tom Judd http who lives near Portland Oregon knows what it is like to be diagnosed with a deadly cancer for which there is no approved drug. After being diagnosed with MCC in  his cancer jumped from a small pimple on his nose throughout his body growing until it interfered dangerously with organ function. By early  the disease had nearly killed him despite surgery radiation and chemotherapy. Then he enrolled in a clinical trial and received his first of many infusions of the new immunotherapy drug  avelumab. Within six weeks of that first infusion more than onethird of the cancer throughout his body was gone and today more than  percent of his tumor mass has disappeared. Because of the data from this clinical trial avelumab brand name Bavencio has become the first systemic therapy approved by the FDA for MCC and the first treatment of any kind approved for metastatic MCC. Dr. Paul Nghiem http affiliate investigator of the Clinical Research Division at Fred Hutch and the George F. Odland Endowed Chair in Dermatology at the University of Washington School of Medicine is a senior investigator on the clinical trial that led to the FDA approval and the senior author on the Lancet Oncology httpthelancet.comjournalslanoncarticlePIISfulltext article httpthelancet.comjournalslanoncarticlePIISfulltext that preceded the approval. He is a leading expert on MCC and a pioneer of immunotherapy for the disease.  The approval as a first and secondline therapy is a really big deal said Nghiem. His team foundational work on the role of immune cells in MCC paved the way for immunotherapy trials in the disease including one he leads of another immunotherapy drug with a similar mechanism of action Mercks Keytruda whose results were published last year and changed the field overnight https  A practicing physician he treats patients with MCC and other skin cancers at Seattle Cancer Care Alliance Fred Hutchs clinical care partner. He is a consultant for EMD Serono Inc. and receives funding from BristolMyers Squibb to perform biomarker studies in MCC clinical trials. At Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center http home to three Nobel laureates interdisciplinary teams of worldrenowned scientists seek new and innovative ways to prevent diagnose and treat cancer HIVAIDS and other lifethreatening diseases. Fred Hutchs pioneering work in bone marrow transplantation led to the development of immunotherapy which harnesses the power of the immune system to treat cancer with minimal side effects. An independent nonprofit research institute based in Seattle Fred Hutch houses the nations first and largest cancer prevention research program as well as the clinical coordinating center of the Womens Health Initiative and the international headquarters of the HIV Vaccine Trials Network. Private contributions are essential httpssecure.convio.netfhcrcsiteDonationidbdf_idmfc_prefT.donationform for enabling Fred Hutch scientists to explore novel research opportunities that lead to important medical breakthroughs. For more information visit fredhutch.org http or follow Fred Hutch on Facebook https Twitter httpstwitter.comHutchinsonCtr or YouTube https_main."