The clinical efficacy and safety of neoadjuvant carboplatin, nab-paclitaxel and pembrolizumab treatment in patients with squamous cell lung cancer: A case report and institutional experience

Background Neoadjuvant chemoimmunotherapy is an emerging treatment option for resectable non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Although platinum–gemcitabine doublets are commonly recommended for squamous NSCLC, carboplatin with nanoparticle albumin-bound paclitaxel (nab-PTX) is widely used in advanced disease due to the favorable safety profile and efficacy. However, its application in a neoadjuvant setting remains off-label and is understudied. Case presentation Here, we report a 68-year-old man with clinical stage IIIB squamous cell carcinoma of the left upper lobe. He received two cycles of neoadjuvant therapy with carboplatin, nab-PTX, and pembrolizumab. Treatment was well tolerated without grade ≥3 adverse events, and follow-up imaging revealed substantial shrinkage of the primary tumor and mediastinal lymphadenopathy. He subsequently underwent robot-assisted thoracoscopic left upper lobectomy with S6 segmentectomy, achieving R0 resection. Pathologic examination revealed marked treatment-induced tumor regression. We retrospectively reviewed six consecutive patients with resectable squamous cell carcinoma who received neoadjuvant carboplatin, nab-PTX, and pembrolizumab at our institution between December 1, 2022, and September 30, 2025. Among those six patients, 66.7% (4/6) achieved pathologic complete response, which was observed in two patients with a programmed death-ligand 1 expression of