The Merkel Cell Carcinoma (MCC) Patient Registry initiative organized by Project Data Sphere is off to a fast start in 2022 with four manuscripts accepted for publication and a key contributor to the program, Dr. David Miller from Mass General Brigham and his team, has submitted two new manuscripts.  Miller is co-chair of PDS’ Merkel Cell Carcinoma Task Force.

The MCC Patient Registry is a national multi-institutional collaborative effort to record outcomes and events in MCC patients. MCC is a rare skin cancer, and this registry will trailblaze new methodologies that continue to enable investigators to derive insights about patient care from the real-world outcome data.

Dr. Sophia Shalhout, a data scientist from Mass General Brigham, presented her work on “Real world assessment of ipi-nivo in anti-PD-(L)1 refractory Merkel cell carcinoma” at the MCC Multi-center Interest Group meeting on March 25. Multiple members of the MCC taskforce — Miller,  Shalhout, and Dr. Kenneth Tsai, Pathology Research Vice Chair at Moffitt Cancer Center – have been invited to present on important aspects of Merkel Cell Carcinoma (including the registry work) at 2nd International Symposium on Merkel Cell Carcinoma (April 25 and 26).

We have learned that patient populations and clinical management decisions are more varied across sites than initially expected. This finding suggests that more patients will be required for certain subgroup analyses. We are evaluating options to increase patient accrual.

For more information, or to get involved, please contact Ravi Komandur, PhD, MCC Patient Registry Program Director, at ravikumar.komandur@projectdatasphere.org