MSD has welcomed the Federal Government’s announcement that patients with the most deadly form of skin cancer – advanced melanoma – will be able to access the company’s anti-PD1 immunotherapy (pembrolizumab) on the PBS.
Regulatory
TGen and Mayo Clinic help launch national clinical trials to combat advanced skin cancer
Arizonans will receive benefit from recently FDA-approved precision medicine clinical trial to fight deadly melanoma
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.
As FDA Considers Approval, Weber Discusses Adjuvant Ipilimumab in Melanoma
In the EORTC 18071 study, patients with melanoma who received ipilimumab (Yervoy; n = 475) had an average recurrence-free survival of 26.1 months versus 17.1 months in placebo-treated patients (n = 476). Additionally, 46.5% of ipilimumab-treated patients survived 3 years without experiencing recurrence compared to 34.8% of patients in the control arm.