SoCO Journal Club
SoCO Journal Club
Read the paper. Interrogate the evidence.
A multidisciplinary forum for examining practice-changing and practice-informing literature in cutaneous oncology—with attention to what the data show, what they do not show, and how strongly they should change what we believe or do.
How we approach the literature
Persuaded by evidence. Rarely certain.
The SoCO Journal Club is a multi-institutional and multidisciplinary forum for discussing important literature in skin cancer.
The aim is not simply to summarize a paper or decide whether it is “positive.” We examine the question, design, assumptions, analyses, uncertainty, clinical relevance, and the degree to which the evidence should alter practice—or generate the next question.
Beginning with selected meetings in late 2025 and continuing in 2026, we are also preserving more of the meeting itself: the questions that animated the discussion, the perspectives that changed our thinking, and the people who were in the room.
The conversations behind the papers
Meeting recaps
For selected Journal Clubs, we preserve the conversation behind the paper: the central question, the discussion it generated, who was in the room, and where the group landed.
August 14, 2026 · SoCO Journal Club
FIRST in Cutaneous Squamous Cell Carcinoma
What does another dose actually buy us?
Response-guided immunotherapy, treatment intensity, Bayesian causal inference, and the limits of what observational data can tell us about treatment de-escalation in CSCC.
June 12, 2026 · SoCO Journal Club
Local Recurrence After Excision of Merkel Cell Carcinoma
How common is true primary-site local recurrence after complete excision—and what does that mean for postoperative radiation?
A multidisciplinary discussion of modern local-recurrence risk, confounding by indication, salvageability, radiation burden, and whether contemporary evidence supports more selective use of postoperative primary-site radiation in MCC.
April 6, 2026 · SoCO Journal Club
IGNYTE: RP1 + Nivolumab in PD-1–Failed Melanoma
When an intratumoral agent is combined with continued PD-1 blockade in a single-arm trial, what treatment effect has actually been established?
A discussion of a compelling clinical signal—and the harder inferential questions beneath it: local versus systemic activity, contribution of components, historical controls, ORR, estimands, and what evidence should be required for regulatory and clinical adoption.
February 13, 2026 · SoCO Journal Club
MAIC in BRAF-Mutant Advanced Melanoma
How much can reweighting really buy us when the randomized comparison does not exist?
Nivolumab plus relatlimab versus BRAF/MEK inhibitors—and a deeper discussion of matching-adjusted indirect comparisons, covariate balance, effective sample size, residual confounding, and how much confidence an unanchored MAIC should earn.
November 24, 2025 · SoCO Journal Club
MATISSE: Neoadjuvant Nivolumab ± Ipilimumab in Resectable CSCC
When response is this deep and this early, how much local therapy is still necessary?
A response-adapted discussion of ultra-short neoadjuvant immunotherapy, whether surgery should remain automatic, what clinical, imaging, and pathologic signals might support treatment de-escalation, and where dual-checkpoint blockade may fit in high-risk resectable CSCC.
Joint academic–industry session with Bristol Myers Squibb
July 11, 2025 · SoCO Journal Club
C-POST: Adjuvant Cemiplimab in High-Risk Resected CSCC
A positive phase 3 trial reduced recurrence—but who should actually receive adjuvant anti–PD-1, and what role should radiation still play?
A multidisciplinary discussion of adjuvant cemiplimab after surgery and postoperative radiation, the competing rise of neoadjuvant immunotherapy, treatment burden and overtreatment, and why C-POST and KEYNOTE-630 may have produced different results.
Joint academic–industry session with Regeneron
The complete reading history
Article archive
Not every prior meeting has a full recap—and that is fine. The citation archive below preserves the papers discussed across the history of SoCO Journal Club.
When a richer meeting recap exists, the recap above should be considered the preferred record of the discussion; the article remains here as part of the complete reading history.