Treating advanced melanoma patients with either a combination of the immunotherapy drugs nivolumab (Opdivo™) and ipilimumab (Yervoy™) or nivolumab alone significantly increases progression-free survival (PFS) over using ipilimumab alone, according to new findings from researchers at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) simultaneously presented today at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) annual meeting and published online in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM). Examining specific characteristics of each patient’s tumor has also given researchers clearer understanding of which patients should receive the combination.
MRV Research
ASCO 2015: Opdivo melanoma phase III beats Yervoy in combo and alone
Bristol-Myers Squibb Co.’s programmed cell death-1 inhibitor Opdivo (nivolumab), cleared by the FDA late last year for melanoma and in March for squamous non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), worked better than the firm’s other approved melanoma drug Yervoy (ipilimumab) in patients with previously untreated cases of the deadly skin cancer not only when the two drugs were given together but also when Opdivo was administered by itself.
Pembrolizumab Plus Low-Dose Ipilimumab Safe in Melanoma, Renal Cell Carcinoma
Pembrolizumab plus low-dose ipilimumab combination therapy was considered to have an acceptable safety profile in patients with advanced melanoma or renal cell carcinoma during an initial safety run-in period, a study presented at the 2015 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting in Chicago, IL, has shown.
Novel melanoma treatment strategy offers promise
A particular enzyme, guanosine monophosphate synthase (GMPS), has been found to drive melanoma growth, and a new pharmaceutical strategy targeting that protein has been proposed in a report in Cell Death and Differentiation (2015; doi:10.1038/cdd.2015.47).