Landmark trial for drug therapy to boost melanoma survival
Source: Herald Sun Melbourne, September 2014
VICTORIANS with the most common melanoma will be treated with a new drugs therapy which, in a clinical trial, increased average survival times by another 50 per cent.
The breakthrough global study, led by the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, showed that a two-drug combination therapy worked better than a single drug therapy.
The study, involving 495 patients with BRAF-positive melanoma, compared the use of vemurafenib — which blocks the ability of the abnormal BRAF protein to drive cell growth — alone and in combination with cobimetinib, which affects the MEK gene.
They found that with the combination, average survival increased from six months to about 10 months.
Professor Grant McArthur presented the findings at the European Society for Medical Oncology’s 2014 Congress in Madrid overnight. They were published today in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Peter Mac’s Dr Mark Shackleton said while vemurafenib had “revolutionised” treatment of advanced melanoma patients, most of the patients relapsed after about six months, once cancer cells became resistant to the drug.
But by also using another drug to knock out MEK, which was the key mechanism through which patients became resistant to the original treatment, survival times increased by 50 per cent.
“It’s a complete revolution in the way we treat melanomas that have progressed beyond the point of being able to be surgically removed,” Dr Shackleton said.
“What this trial does is prove convincingly that if you can really delve in to discover the underlying mechanisms that provide resistance to a drug, and then design additional drugs that can target that resistance, then that’s a strategy that absolutely works,” he said.
Kylie French, 41, had melanomas removed three times over 10 years. They had spread to 13 tumours across her body. In the 10 months she has been on the combination treatment, the tumours have stabilised and shrunk, some so much that they cannot be seen on scans.
“I was told, after radiation last year, that if I did nothing I had 12 months to live,” Mrs French said.
“I’m on it until the side effects become too bad, or my body starts rejecting the drugs. But I have to at least see my grandson start school,” she said.