Christian U. Blank, MD, PhD, on Melanoma: Potentially Practice-Changing Results From the NADINA Trial
2024 ASCO Annual Meeting
Christian U. Blank, MD, PhD, of the Netherlands Cancer Institute, discusses findings of an investigator-initiated phase III trial showing that neoadjuvant ipilimumab plus nivolumab followed by response-driven adjuvant treatment improved event-free survival in patients with macroscopic, resectable stage III melanoma compared with adjuvant nivolumab (LBA2)
Transcript
Disclaimer: This video transcript has not been proofread or edited and may contain errors.
NADINA is the first phase III, investigator-initiated trial, testing a combination of neoadjuvant checkpoint inhibition against standard of care adjuvant therapy. NADINA showed that neoadjuvant ipilumumab plus nivolumab is superior to adjuvant nivolumab in the event free survival, showing that 83% at one year are rent-free in case of treated neoadjuvant versus only 57 treated with the standard of care adjuvant therapy.
Special about NADINA is also that it has a personalized adjuvant part. Patients achieving a deep response, what we call major pathologic response after the neoadjuvant part, didn't receive any subsequent other therapy, no adjuvant therapy, and started the follow-up at once, and this was the case in nearly 60% of the patients. And despite of only this six weeks of treatment, these patients have an excellent outcome with an event-free survival of 95% at 12 months.
Therefore, NADINA established for the first time a neoadjuvant combination scheme for macroscopic melanoma, but it also shows that we should personalize these neoadjuvant therapies, saving toxicity and resources for patients, achieving an excellent response after the neoadjuvant therapy. In that way, it establishes a really novel concept in macroscopic melanoma.
The ASCO Post Staff
Claudio Cerchione, MD, PhD, of Italy’s Istituto Scientifico Romagnolo per lo Studio e la Cura dei Tumori, discusses preliminary findings from a prospective trial suggesting that by adding whole-body MRI to fludeoxyglucose-18 (FDG) PET/CT scans, clinicians may detect bone lesions earlier and more accurately in patients with either newly diagnosed or relapsed multiple myeloma, thus translating into potentially better outcomes (Abstract 7512).
The ASCO Post Staff
Brian I. Rini, MD, of Vanderbilt Ingram Cancer Center, discusses phase III findings of the KEYNOTE-426 study of pembrolizumab plus axitinib vs sunitinib for patients with advanced renal cell carcinoma. He details the exploratory biomarker results, including RNA sequencing, whole-exome sequencing, and PD-L1 (Abstract 4505).
The ASCO Post Staff
Laurence Albiges, MD, PhD, of Gustave Roussy, Université Paris-Saclay, discusses phase III findings showing that high baseline serum KIM-1 levels were associated with poorer prognosis but improved clinical outcomes with atezolizumab vs placebo in patients with renal cell carcinoma at increased risk of recurrence after resection. Increased post-treatment KIM-1 levels were found to be associated with worse disease-free survival (Abstract 4506).
The ASCO Post Staff
Alicia Morgans, MD, MPH, of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and Karim Fizazi, MD, PhD, of Institut Gustave Roussy and the University of Paris-Saclay, discuss a second interim analysis of the health-related quality of life and pain outcomes in the PSMAfore study (Abstract 5003).
The ASCO Post Staff
Reshma Jagsi, MD, DPhil, of Emory University Winship Cancer Institute, and Christian F. Singer, MD, MPH, of the Medical University of Vienna, discuss the MUC-1 vaccine tecemotide. When added to standard neoadjuvant systemic therapy for patients with early-stage breast cancer, this vaccine improved distant relapse–free and overall survival rates. Despite the exploratory nature of this observation, says Dr. Singer, this is the first long-term survival benefit of an anticancer vaccine in breast disease reported to date (Abstract 587).
