Combination of Nivolumab and Ipilimumab Improved Overall Survival For Advanced Melanoma Patients
Source: AACR, April 2017
?WASHINGTON — Among patients with advanced melanoma, those who received both nivolumab (Opdivo) and ipilimumab (Yervoy) had improved overall survival compared with those who received only ipilimumab and appeared to have more favorable survival outcomes compared with those who received nivolumab, according to results from the phase III CheckMate 067 clinical trial presented here at the AACR Annual Meeting 2017, April 1-5.
“The approval of checkpoint inhibitors like ipilimumab and nivolumab when used as monotherapies has transformed the treatment of advanced melanoma in the past few years, with about 30–40 percent of patients having remarkable and durable responses,” said James Larkin, PhD, FRCP, a consultant medical oncologist at The Royal Marsden in London. “This clinical trial set out to test whether treating patients with nivolumab alone, or a combination of ipilimumab and nivolumab could increase the percentage of patients who benefit when compared to the former standard of care comparitor, ipilimumab. James Larkin, PhD, FRCP
“Early results from the trial, published in 2015, showed that nivolumab alone or combined with ipilimumab resulted in significantly longer progression-free survival than ipilimumab alone and led the EMA [European Medicines Agency] and FDA [U.S. Food and Drug Administration] to grant approval for the use of nivolumab in combination with ipilimumab,” continued Larkin. “A condition of the FDA accelerated approval was that it was necessary to show that the progression-free survival data translated into improved overall survival, and here we show that: nivolumab alone or combined with ipilimumab resulted in significantly improved overall survival.”