ASCO 2018: PET imaging may top CT in predicting therapy response in melanoma patients

Source: Health Imaging, June 2018

PET imaging may better predict long-term benefits and guide discontinuation of therapy compared to standard contrast CT for patients with metastatic melanoma, according to findings presented Monday, June 4, at the 2018 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASC0) annual meeting in Chicago.

Researchers—led by Alexander Menzies, PhD, a medical oncologist and senior research fellow at Melanoma Institute Australia—found that most metastatic melanoma patients who survived one year with PD1-based therapy had a complete metabolic response shown through PET imaging and 96 percent of patients had an ongoing response to therapy.

Although PD1-based therapy has proven successful for many metastatic melanoma patients, determining whether these patients will have a long-term response to the therapy remains unclear, wrote Menzies and his colleagues.