# Pathological assessment of resection specimens after neoadjuvant therapy for metastatic melanoma

Source: https://onco.cc/key-papers/paper-tetzlaff-ann-oncol/  
OnCo record `paper-tetzlaff-ann-oncol` (Key paper). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

Paper cited by one term page, indexed on Europe PMC as PubMed record 29945191 and published in Annals of Oncology; the citing page links this DOI, which is how the record was matched.

## Summary

Background: Clinical trials have recently evaluated safety and efficacy of neoadjuvant therapy among patients with surgically resectable regional melanoma metastases. To capture informative prognostic data connected to pathological response in such trials, it is critical to standardize pathologic assessment and reporting of tumor response after this treatment.

Methods: The International Neoadjuvant Melanoma Consortium meetings in 2016 and 2017 assembled pathologists from academic centers to develop consensus guidelines for pathologic examination and reporting of surgical specimens from AJCC (8th edition) stage IIIB/C/D or oligometastatic stage IV melanoma patients treated with neoadjuvant-targeted or immune therapy. Patterns of pathologic response are provided context to inform these guidelines.

Results: Based on our collective experience and guided by efforts in well-established neoadjuvant settings like breast cancer, procedures directing handling of pre- and post-neoadjuvant therapy-treated melanoma specimens are provided to facilitate comparison of findings across different trials and centers. Definitions of pathologic response are provided together with guidelines for reporting and quantifying the extent of pathologic response. Finally, the spectrum of histopathologic responses observed following neoadjuvant-targeted and immune-checkpoint therapy is described and illustrated.

Conclusions: Standardizing pathologic evaluation of resected melanoma metastases following neoadjuvant-targeted or immune-checkpoint therapy allows more robust stratification of patient outcomes. This includes recognizing the spectrum of histopathologic response patterns to neoadjuvant therapy and a standard approach to grading pathologic responses. Such an approach will facilitate comparison of results across clinical trials and inform ongoing correlative studies into the mechanisms of response and resistance to agents applied in the neoadjuvant setting.

Indexed on Europe PMC as PubMed record 29945191 (DOI 10.1093/annonc/mdy226). Matched by DOI alone: one term page cites this DOI among its external links (the pages are listed under Related), and this page was written so that the citation resolves inside OnCo. No figure has been checked by an editor.

## Fields

- Kind: Key paper
- Last checked: 2026-09-22
- Tags: europepmc-ingest
- Journal: Annals of Oncology
- Year: 2018
- DOI: 10.1093/annonc/mdy226
- Authors: Tetzlaff MT, Messina JL, Stein JE, et al.
- What it means: One term page on OnCo cites this paper by its DOI; this record gives the citation a page of its own so a reader can follow it without leaving OnCo. Read the abstract above alongside the citing page listed under Related; the record was created automatically from the Europe PMC entry and its figures have not been checked by hand.
- Caveats: Matched to the citing OnCo records by DOI alone; the summary reproduces the Europe PMC abstract and no figure has been verified against the full paper.

## Sources

- Ann Oncol 2018: https://doi.org/10.1093/annonc/mdy226
- PubMed: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29945191/
- Europe PMC: https://europepmc.org/article/MED/29945191

## Connected records

- terms: [Major pathological response (MPR)](https://onco.cc/terms/major-pathological-response/)
- journals: [Annals of Oncology](https://onco.cc/journals/annals-of-oncology/)

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