Combining chemotherapy and immunotherapy for advanced anal cancer: are we ready?

Advanced squamous cell carcinoma of the anus is a rare disease with few established treatment options. To date, a combination of platinum-based chemotherapy with taxane or fluorouracil is the standard of care as first-line treatment.1–3 In the refractory setting, immune checkpoint inhibitors have shown antitumour activity in a subset of patients. Thus, the use of immunotherapy in earlier lines of therapy in addition to a chemotherapy backbone might represent an appealing treatment strategy.4