Objectives of the study

Primary Objectives are to assess the feasibility and safety of a neoadjuvant application of Pembrolizumab and to evaluate the effectivity of an anti-PD1-treatment on clinical and pathologic tumor response.

Secondary Objective is to assess the impact of neoadjuvant Pembrolizumab application on patient disease free- and overall survival.

Exploratory objective is the translational assessment of treated and untreated tumors (e.g. inflammatory infiltrates in and around the resected tumor, serum- and tumor tissue cytokine concentrations, multi-OMICS tissue analysis; see section “Translational research”) in order to generate a hypothesis on potential biomarkers predicting the efficacy of Pembrolizumab.