First-of-its-kind clinical trial eliminates or shrinks melanoma tumors in 70% of patients
Source: Medical Xpress, July 2024
A clinical trial has shown that a new drug combination utilized before surgery completely eliminated or shrunk melanoma tumors in 70% of trial participants. The phase II clinical trial, NeoACTIVATE, enrolled patients with stage 3 melanoma; trial results were recently shared in a study published in Nature Communications.
“We saw that about two-thirds of the patients in one arm of the trial had no remaining tumor at all at the time of their surgery," said Matthew S. Block, M.D., Ph.D., leader of the Stand Up To Cancer (SU2C) Catalyst Research Team that ran the clinical trial, immunologist and a medical oncologist at the Mayo Clinic Comprehensive Cancer Center and senior author of the study.
The new drug therapy tested in this clinical trial involved two combinations of targeted therapy and immunotherapy before surgery, and more immunotherapy after surgery.