Safety and efficacy data from a phase I/II study of urelumab in combination with nivolumab (Opdivo) in patients with hematologic and solid tumors, including biomarker analyses by level of programmed death ligand 1 (PD-L1) expression, was recently presented at the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer ...
Patients with malignant melanoma are more likely to respond to immunotherapy treatment if they have greater diversity in their gut bacteria, according to new research presented by Wargo et al at the National Cancer Research Institute's (NCRI) Cancer Conference in Liverpool, United Kingdom....
In an Australian trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Dieng et al found that use of a psychoeducational intervention reduced the fear of cancer recurrence and stress among patients at high risk of developing a second primary melanoma. Study Details In the trial, 164 patients from 3 ...
In an analysis from the phase IB KEYNOTE-001 trial, Daud et al found that the level of programmed cell death ligand 1 (PD-L1) expression was associated with outcomes of pembrolizumab (Keytruda) treatment in patients with advanced melanoma. These findings were reported in the Journal of Clinical...
A pooled analysis from three clinical trials in advanced melanoma shows that although patients treated with nivolumab and nivolumab plus ipilimumab with ≥ 5% programmed death-ligand 1 (PD-L1) tumor expression have similar progression-free survival, durable response rates were higher for the...
The investigational immunotherapeutic IMC-20D7S was found to be well tolerated and somewhat active in patients with advanced melanoma, including one complete response, according to the results of a phase I/Ib trial reported by Khalil et al in Clinical Cancer Research. IMD-20D7S is a...
In the phase III European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC) trial 18071 reported at the recent European Society for Medical Oncology meeting and in The New England Journal of Medicine by Eggermont et al, adjuvant ipilimumab (Yervoy) was found to improve recurrence-free and...
Paolo A. Ascierto, MD, of the Istituto Nazionale Tumori–Fondazione Pascale, discusses in Italian overall survival and safety results from a phase 3 trial of ipilimumab at 3 mg/kg vs 10 mg/kg in patients with metastatic melanoma. (Abstract 1106O)
Ipilimumab (Yervoy) as adjuvant therapy significantly improves overall survival in patients with high-risk stage III melanoma, according to the European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC) 18071 phase III trial results presented by Eggermont et al at the European Society for...
Alexander Eggermont, MD, PhD, of Gustave Roussy, discusses final overall survival findings on ipilimumab vs placebo after complete resection of stage III melanoma. (Abstract LBA2)
Christian U. Blank, MD, PhD, of the Netherlands Cancer Institute, discusses study findings on neoadjuvant ipilimumab plus nivolumab in patients with palpable stage III melanoma. (Abstract LBA39)
Paolo A. Ascierto, MD, of the Istituto Nazionale Tumori–Fondazione Pascale, discusses overall survival and safety results from a phase III trial of ipilimumab at 3 mg/kg vs 10 mg/kg in patients with metastatic melanoma. (Abstract 1106O)
Omid Hamid, MD, of The Angeles Clinic and Research Institute, discusses survival data from this clinical trial on pembrolizumab vs investigator-choice chemotherapy for ipilimumab-refractory melanoma. (Abstract 1107O) Follow him on Twitter: @omidhamidmd
Although some patients with melanoma experience durable responses to treatment with the anti–PD-1 (programmed cell death protein 1) therapy pembrolizumab (Keytruda), the majority of patients do not experience a durable clinical benefit from anti–PD-1 monotherapy, according to a study by ...
A multibasket phase Ib study evaluating the clinical activity, tolerability, and antitumor activity of the cytokine-based immunotherapy AM0010 alone or in combination with the immune checkpoint inhibitor pembrolizumab (Keytruda) has found that in monotherapy, objective responses to AM0010 were ...
A new study from Drexel University College of Medicine suggests all organ transplant recipients, regardless of race, should receive routine, total-body screenings for skin cancer. Out of 259 nonwhite transplant recipients who were evaluated in the study, 19 skin cancer lesions were identified in...
Hodi et al found “encouraging survival outcomes” with the addition of nivolumab to ipilimumab in patients with previously untreated unresectable stage III or IV melanoma, according to 2-year overall survival data in the phase II CheckMate 069 trial. These results were reported in The...
On September 13, 2016, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) modified the dosage regimen for nivolumab (Opdivo) for the currently approved indications for renal cell carcinoma, metastatic melanoma, and non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). The currently approved recommended dosage...
In a phase II trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, Kaufman et al found that the anti–PD-L1 (programmed cell death ligand 1) monoclonal antibody avelumab produced durable responses in patients with stage IV Merkel cell carcinoma progressing after cytotoxic chemotherapy. Study Details In...
In an analysis of National Cancer Data Base data reported in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Bhatia et al found that adjuvant radiotherapy was associated with a survival benefit in patients with stage I and II but not stage III Merkel cell carcinoma, with no benefit of adjuvant...
In a systematic review and meta-analysis reported in JAMA Oncology, Nishino et al identified the rates of PD-1 (programmed cell death protein 1) inhibitor–related pneumonitis in patients with advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), renal cell carcinoma, and melanoma. Rates were...
Researchers at Tel Aviv University (TAU) may have unraveled the metastatic mechanism of melanoma. According to a paper published by Dror et al in Nature Cell Biology, scientists discovered that before spreading to other organs, a melanoma tumor sends out tiny vesicles containing molecules of...
Immune response measured in tumor biopsies during the course of early treatment predicts which melanoma patients will benefit from specific immune checkpoint blockade drugs, according to researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. Chen et al reported their findings in...
As reported by Ascierto et al in The Lancet Oncology, longer-term follow-up in the pivotal phase III coBRIM trial confirmed the benefit of adding cobimetinib to vemurafenib (Zelboraf) in first-line treatment of BRAF V600–mutant unresectable stage IIIC or IV melanoma. Study Details In the...
A Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) research team has identified an additional mechanism for resistance to targeted treatment for BRAF-mutant melanoma. Their findings, published by Shen et al in Nature Medicine, report that inactivating mutations in two genes responsible for regulating key...
In a letter to the editor in The New England Journal of Medicine, de Maleissye et al described two cases of severe demyelinating polyradiculoneuropathy that occurred after pembrolizumab (Keytruda) treatment for advanced melanoma. Case 1 A 45-year-old woman receiving pembrolizumab at 2 mg/kg every ...
The immunotherapy ipilimumab (Yervoy) has revolutionized the treatment of malignant melanoma and resulted in durable responses in 20% to 25% of patients with the cancer. A study by Theurich et al investigating the benefits of combining ipilimumab with local peripheral treatments, such as...
In a study reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, Zaretsky et al found that defects in interferon receptor signaling and antigen-presenting pathways were associated with acquired resistance to PD-1 (programmed cell death protein 1) inhibition in melanoma. Resistance Mutations Identified ...
The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) has concluded that the current evidence is insufficient to assess the balance of benefits and harms of visual skin examination by a clinician to screen for skin cancer in asymptomatic adults. The report was published in JAMA. This is an “I...
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Chapuis et al, concurrent use of cytotoxic T lymphocyte (CTL) antigen-4 (CTLA-4) blockade with ipilimumab (Yervoy) and adoptively transferred antigen-specific CTLs produced enduring responses in patients with stage IV melanoma. Study...
In the phase II CheckMate 064 trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, Weber et al found that sequential nivolumab (Opdivo)/ipilimumab (Yervoy) was more active than the reverse sequence (ipilimumab/nivolumab) in patients with advanced melanoma. Study Details In the open-label study, 138 patients...
Goldberg et al found that pembrolizumab (Keytruda) was active in untreated or progressive brain metastases in melanoma and non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), according to a single-center phase II trial reported in The Lancet Oncology. Study Details The study included 36 patients at Yale...
Skin cancer screenings performed by primary care physicians during routine office visits improve the detection of potentially deadly melanomas and find them in earlier stages, according to new research from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. The results were presented by Ferris et al...
Anthony J. Olszanski, RPh, MD, of Fox Chase Cancer Center, and Michael A. Davies, MD, PhD, of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, discuss this phase III study of dabrafenib plus trametinib vs dabrafenib monotherapy in patients with unresectable or metastatic BRAF V600E/K-mutant...
Anthony J. Olszanski, RPh, MD, of Fox Chase Cancer Center, and Michael A. Postow, MD, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, discuss findings from this phase III trial of nivolumab combined with ipilimumab in treatment-naive patients with advanced disease (Abstract 9505).
Anthony J. Olszanski, RPh, MD, of Fox Chase Cancer Center, and Caroline Robert, MD, PhD, of Gustave Roussy and Paris-Sud University, discuss study findings on pembrolizumab and the overall survival benefit for patients with advanced disease (Abstract 9503).
A protein called Bim may hold the clue to which patients may be successful on immunotherapy for metastatic melanoma, according to the results of a study by Mayo Clinic researchers led by senior author Haidong Dong, MD, PhD, and published by Dronca et al in JCI Insight. “Immune checkpoint...
Long-term follow-up from a phase Ib trial (KEYNOTE-001) in newly diagnosed and previously treated patients with advanced melanoma showed that 40% of patients were alive 3 years after starting the programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1) inhibitor pembrolizumab (Keytruda), with similar 36-month...
Untreated severe obstructive sleep apnea is associated with increased aggressiveness of malignant cutaneous melanoma, according a multicenter, prospective study. The new study, which involved researchers from 24 teaching hospitals that are part of the Spanish Sleep and Breathing Network, was...
Poor response to combined BRAF and MEK inhibition with dabrafenib (Tafinlar)/trametinib (Mekinist) in patients with BRAF inhibitor–refractory metastatic melanoma may be associated with failure to significantly inhibit the MAPK pathway, according to a single-center phase II study reported in...
The PD-1 (programmed cell death protein 1) inhibitor pembrolizumab (Keytruda) was active in advanced Merkel cell carcinoma in both Merkel cell polyomavirus (MCP)-positive and -negative tumors, according to Nghiem et al, who reported their phase II study findings in The New England Journal of...
More than a third of metastatic melanoma patients (34%) who received the anti–programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1) immunotherapeutic nivolumab (Opdivo) in a phase I clinical trial are still alive 5 years after starting treatment, according to research presented by Hodi et al at the 2016...
The new investigational anticancer therapeutic BGB-283, which targets the RAF family of proteins, was safe, tolerable, and showed signs of clinical activity in patients who had a range of types of cancer with mutations in BRAF, KRAS, and NRAS, according to results from a phase I clinical trial...
In a study reported in a research letter in JAMA Oncology, Rao et al found that high expression of EZH2 and Ki67 was associated with more-aggressive basal cell carcinoma.EZH2 is a histone methyltransferase of the polycomb repressive complex 2. EZH2 overexpression or gain of function mutations has...
Cancer risk increases with one's age as accumulated damage to our cells and chronic inflammation occur over time. Now, an international team of scientists led by The Wistar Institute has shown that aged tumor cells in melanoma behave differently from younger tumor cells, according to study results...
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Fang et al found that lower vitamin D levels were associated with poorer outcome in patients with melanoma independent of C-reactive protein (CRP) levels. Study Details The study involved data from 1,042 prospectively observed patients with ...
Biomedical engineering researchers at North Carolina State University (NC State) and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC Chapel Hill) have developed a technique that uses a patch embedded with microneedles to deliver cancer immunotherapy treatment directly to the site of melanoma....
In collaboration with researchers from Ghent University, Vlaams Instituut voor Biotechnologie (VIB) scientists from the University of Leuven have revealed a remarkable link between malignant melanoma and a noncoding RNA gene called SAMMSON. The SAMMSON gene is specifically expressed in human...
Immunotherapy using anti–programmed cell death 1 (PD-1) antibodies has revolutionized the treatment of advanced melanoma and a growing list of other cancers. But 60% to 70% of melanoma tumors are resistant to anti–PD-1 antibodies, and there is an urgent need to understand how to...
As reported by Hodi et al in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, use of conventional Response Evaluation Criteria in Solid Tumors (RECIST) to assess response may have underestimated the benefit of treatment with the programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1) inhibitor pembrolizumab (Keytruda) in the...