Melanoma & Skin Cancer

Sanjiv S. Agarwala, MD, chief of medical oncology and hematology, St. Luke’s Cancer Center, professor of Medicine, Temple University School of Medicine, discusses whether the overall survival (OS) justifies the toxicities demonstrated in the CheckMate-067 trial for patients with melanoma.

Patients with stage III or IV melanoma assigned to 10 mg/kg ipilimumab (Yervoy) lived longer than patients assigned to a lower dose of the anti-CTLA-4 anticlonal antibody, but at the cost of greater toxicity.

Jedd D. Wolchok, MD, PhD, chief, Melanoma and Immunotherapeutics Service, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, discusses weighing the overall survival (OS) benefit with the increased risk of toxicities seen with the combination of nivolumab (Opdivo) and ipilimumab (Yervoy) in treatment-naïve patients with advanced melanoma.

Adding the IDO inhibitor indoximod to pembrolizumab led to an overall response rate of 52% in patients with advanced melanoma, according to findings from a phase II trial reported at the 2017 AACR Annual Meeting.

Adding a formulation of the Coxsackievirus A21 (CAVATAK®) to ipilimumab (Yervoy) yielded an overall response rate of 50% and was well-tolerated in immunotherapy-naïve and pretreated patients with advanced melanoma.

Treatment with the RAF dimer inhibitor BGB-283 led to clinical benefit for patients with BRAF V600-mutated melanoma, papillary thyroid cancer, and ovarian cancer.

Jason J. Luke, MD, assistant professor of Medicine, The University of Chicago Medicine, discusses the controversy surrounding the combination of nivolumab (Opdivo) and ipilimumab (Yervoy) in treatment-naïve patients with advanced melanoma, which was explored in the CheckMate-067 trial, during the AACR Annual Meeting.

The PD-1 and CTLA-4 inhibitor combination of nivolumab (Opdivo) and ipilimumab (Yervoy) was associated with a 12% reduction in the risk of death versus nivolumab monotherapy in patients with treatment-naïve advanced melanoma.

Treatment with the PD-L1 inhibitor avelumab induced an objective response rate of 33% in patients with advanced Merkel cell carcinoma in the phase II JAVELIN Merkel 200 study, including 2 additional complete responses since the primary analysis.

Kiran K. Turaga, MD, associate professor of surgery, vice chief, section of general surgery and surgical oncology, director of the Surgical GI Cancer Program and the Regional Therapeutics Program at The University of Chicago Medicine, discusses whether patients vie for immunotherapy versus surgery as treatment for their melanoma.

Christopher R. Shea, MD, the Eugene J. Van Scott Professor of Medicine, chief of the Section of Dermatology at The University of Chicago Medicine, discusses the dermatological management of melanoma.

Thomas F. Gajewski, MD, PhD, professor of medicine at The University of Chicago Medicine, discusses what targets are currently being explored in patients with melanoma.

Thomas F. Gajewski, MD, PhD, discusses how the combination of PD-1 and IDO inhibitors could change the standard of care for patients with melanoma, and highlights other emerging targets on the horizon.

Kiran K. Turaga, MD, discusses advances in surgical approaches for the treatment of patients with melanoma.

Jason J. Luke, MD, discusses adjuvant therapy for patients with melanoma, as well as the future of targeted agents and immunotherapy.

Christopher R. Shea, MD, expresses the importance of expanding melanoma knowledge to more specialists as well as the advancements in pathology over the last several years.

Jason J. Luke, MD, assistant professor of Medicine, The University of Chicago Medicine, discusses some of the ongoing adjuvant therapies in development for patients with melanoma. Luke shared this insight during the 2017 OncLive State of the Science Summit on Melanoma and Immuno-Oncology.

Array BioPharma has withdrawn its new drug application for binimetinib as a treatment for patients with NRAS-mutant advanced melanoma, based on feedback from the FDA during a preplanned review meeting.

Investigators are looking into a novel immunotherapy combination that pairs the first-in-class IDO1 inhibitor epacadostat (INCB024360) with the checkpoint blockade agent pembrolizumab (Keytruda) in patients with unresectable or metastatic melanoma.

Evidence continues to build for the long-term efficacy of PD-1-targeting immunotherapies in melanoma, including fresh data indicating when patients can stop taking the drugs and still maintain a response.

Certain components of the cancer care continuum have the potential to favorably impact the rapidly encroaching crisis in cancer care costs at the societal level.

Morganna Freeman, DO, associate director, Melanoma and Cutaneous Oncology Program, The Angeles Clinic and Research Institute, discusses the challenges associated with treatment selection in melanoma.

Jeffery S. Weber, MD, PhD, deputy director of the Laura and Isaac Perlmutter Cancer Center, co-director of the Melanoma Program, and head of Experimental Therapeutics at NYU Langone Medical Center, discusses combination strategies for patients with BRAF-mutant melanoma.

Tara C. Mitchell, MD, assistant professor of Medicine, Perelman School of Medicine at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, discusses new combination regimens for patients with melanoma.

Michael A. Postow, MD, medical oncologist, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, discusses some of the advancements that have recently taken place in immunotherapy in the field of melanoma.