AMSTERDAM—Long term survival — three to ten years — in nearly a quarter of patients with unresectable, metastatic or locally advanced melanoma treated with the cytotoxic T-lymphocyte antigen 4 (CTLA-4
AMSTERDAM—Long term survival — three to ten years — in nearly a quarter of patients with unresectable, metastatic or locally advanced melanoma treated with the cytotoxic T-lymphocyte antigen 4 (CTLA-4)-inhibiting monoclonal antibody ipilimumab was reported, here, by researchers from Germany, France and the USA. These results — presented to the 2013 European Cancer Congress — came from a pooled analysis comprising the longest follow up of the largest group of patients treated with this agent which works by reversing the inhibition of CTLA-4’s natural cancer cell killing mechanisms turned off by the melanoma disease process.
One of the individual studies contributing to the pooled analysis reported a doubling of five year overall survival in patients randomized to have ipilimumab added to their standard dacarbazine therapy. Investigator Michele Maio MD PhD Director of Medical Oncology & Immunotherapy at the University Hospital in Siena, Italy, discussed his group’s findings which in the light of the fact that ipilimumab’s immunological mode of action was complementary to the mechanisms of the other important new agents showing promise in advanced melanoma: so more than one agent could be used in the same patient at different times.
Another study reported here looked at the relationship between progression free survival in melanoma and overall survival. Keith Flaherty MD, Director of the Termeer Center for Targeted Therapies at the Massachusetts General Hospital, told delegates his group came up with definitive findings of a very robust relationship between PFS and OS, in a study which was an aggregate of all randomized trials of advanced melanoma conducted with dacarbazine (DTIC) as control arm investigating ipilimumab, dabrafenib, vemurafenib and trametinib therapies.