After UCLA-led study, combination drug therapy approved by FDA to treat advanced melanoma

Source: UCLA, November 2015

A researcher at the UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center helped develop a combination drug therapy that was approved today by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to treat metastatic melanoma. The therapy shows great promise for extending the lives of people with an advanced form of the disease, and it does so without causing a secondary skin cancer, a side effect seen in some patients who took only one of the drugs.

The study was conducted at UCLA and 135 other sites in the U.S., Europe, Australia and Russia.

“Today’s approval is a very significant advance in the treatment of metastatic melanoma,” said Dr. Antoni Ribas, the study’s senior investigator and a researcher at the Jonsson Cancer Center. “For patients with a BRAF mutated melanoma, the combination has higher activity to shrink their tumors, and with less side effects than the drugs on their own.”