Novel Therapies and Combinations Augment Melanoma Treatment Arsenal
Source: OncLive, December 2024
Omid Hamid, MD, discusses recent advances in the melanoma treatment landscape and highlights the 21st Annual International Symposium on Melanoma and Other Cutaneous Malignancies®.
Following the February 2024 FDA accelerated approval of the first cellular therapy for patients with melanoma, the tumor-derived autologous T-cell immunotherapy lifileucel (Amtagvi), investigators are hoping to build on this and other recent gains by developing additional novel therapies for these patients who often experience resistance to other available treatments.
“Novel agents may be helpful in overcoming primary resistance, and that still [represents] a significant proportion of our patients—40% to 50% don’t respond to initial checkpoint inhibitor therapy,” Omid Hamid, MD, director of the Melanoma Program at Cedars Sinai in Los Angeles, California, said in an interview with OncologyLive. “Novel combinations may help overcome that [resistance]. We know that because [data on] our tumor-infiltrating lymphocyte [TIL] therapies in initial trials have shown that most patients [who] responded were initially enrolled [with] primary resistance [following] progression on checkpoint [inhibitors].”