Melanoma & Skin Cancer

Antoni Ribas, MD, PhD, whose work has helped guide and define the growing array of anticancer immunotherapy drugs, was honored in the Melanoma category with a 2015 Giants of Cancer Care® award, a program that the Intellisphere® Oncology Specialty Group launched to honor leaders in the field.

A new drug application has been submitted for binimetinib as a potential treatment for patients with advanced NRAS-mutant metastatic melanoma.

Reinhard Georg Dummer, MD, shares the encouraging phase III findings from the NEMO trial and how it shakes up the treatment paradigm for patients with NRAS-mutated melanoma.

Robert Andtbacka, MD, associate professor in the Division of Surgical Oncology, Department of Surgery at the University of Utah School of Medicine, discusses the optimal use of talimogene laherparepvec (T-VEC) in patients with melanoma.

Morganna Freeman, DO, explains the impact of hedgehog inhibitors in basal cell carcinoma, the ideal patient to receive them, and emerging agents on the horizon for treatment of the disease.

Ryan J. Sullivan, MD, discusses which patients are at risk for advanced basal cell carcinoma, current standard therapies, and options for those who relapse after treatment with hedgehog/smoothened inhibitors.

Jedd D. Wolchok, MD, PhD, chief, Melanoma and Immunotherapeutics Service, Department of Medicine and Ludwig Center at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, discusses the updated findings from the CheckMate-067 trial, which explored nivolumab (Opdivo) combined with ipilimumab (Yervoy) in treatment-naive patients with advanced melanoma.

NICE has approved the combination of nivolumab and ipilimumab for patients with metastatic melanoma, which allows the combination to be used within NHS.

Next-generation sequencing technology is providing greater insight and has uncovered new and unexpected players in melanoma.

Jeffrey S. Weber, MD, PhD, deputy director and co-director of the Melanoma Program, Laura and Isaac Perlmutter Cancer Center at NYU Langone Medical Center, discusses the design and results of the CheckMate-064 trial, which examined outcomes in patients who received nivolumab (Opdivo) given sequentially with ipilimumab (Yervoy) in patients with advanced melanoma.

The combination of the oncolytic virus talimogene laherparepvec (T-VEC) and pembrolizumab (Keytruda) demonstrated evidence of clinical benefit, as well as an acceptable safety profile, in patients with advanced melanoma.

Keith T. Flaherty, MD, discusses choosing between immunotherapy and targeted therapy in the frontline setting for patients with BRAF-mutated melanoma.

The PD-L1 inhibitor avelumab demonstrated durable responses and promising early survival data for patients with pretreated metastatic Merkel cell carcinoma.

Yardena Samuels, PhD, Tenured Associate Professor, Department of Moleular Cell Biology, the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel, discuses her lab’s discovery of a potential prognostic biomarker in cutaneous sporadic melanoma.

The combination of dabrafenib and trametinib continued to demonstrate impressive overall survival and progression-free survival findings for patients with BRAF-mutant metastatic melanoma in 3-year follow-up data from the phase III COMBI-d study.

Reinhard Dummer, MD, professor, Department of Dermatology, University of Zurich Hospital, discusses the results of the phase III NEMO trial, which compared the efficacy of binimetinib with dacarbazine in patients with NRAS-mutant metastatic melanoma.

At a minimum follow-up of 18 months, the combination of nivolumab and ipilimumab reduced the risk of disease progression by 58% compared with ipilimumab alone, and single-agent nivolumab lowered the risk of progression by 45% versus ipilimumab monotherapy in patients with advanced melanoma.

The MEK inhibitor binimetinib reduced the risk of progression or death by 38% compared with dacarbazine in patients with NRAS-mutant metastatic melanoma.

A long-term analysis has shown that approximately one-fifth of patients with BRAF V600-mutant melanoma who were treated with the combination of dabrafenib (Tafinlar) and trametinib (Mekinist) remained progression-free after 3 years, suggesting a plateau of the survival curve.

Forty percent of patients with advanced melanoma who started taking pembrolizumab during the clinical trial that led to its initial approval were still alive after 3 years, with many responders in remission even after stopping treatment.

The European Commission has approved the combination of ipilimumab and nivolumab as a treatment for patients with unresectable or metastatic melanoma regardless of BRAF status.

Antoni Ribas, MD, PhD, shares exciting clinical trial results of immunotherapy agents in patients with melanoma, as well as what the future holds for the field.