Dr. Blank on Predictive Biomarkers in Macroscopic Stage III Melanoma

Source: OncLive, August 2020

Christian U. Blank, MD, PhD, a medical oncologist in the Division of Immunology at the Netherlands Cancer Institute, discusses the future of baseline biomarkers in macroscopic stage 3 melanoma.

In the OpACIN trial, investigators compared neoadjuvant ipilimumab (Yervoy) plus nivolumab (Opdivo) with adjuvant ipilimumab plus nivolumab, while the subsequent OpACIN-neo trial evaluated 3 different dosing schedules of neoadjuvant ipilimumab plus nivolumab only. Updated data from the trials were recently presented during the AACR Virtual Meeting II.

For translational analyses from the trial, baseline biomarkers, such as tumor mutational burden (TMB) and interferon gamma expression, were used to predict which patients would have favorable responses to treatment, says Blank.

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