It’s estimated that one Australian dies of melanoma every five hours. It’s among the most commonly diagnosed cancers in Australia — and the most deadly.
Conferences
Challenges in melanoma clinical research: A snapshot from the Australasian Melanoma Conference 2016
The last decade has seen a surge in therapeutic options for advanced melanoma patients, thanks to research. However, not every patient responds to treatment and researchers are taking on the challenge to find out why.
ASCO Daily News
Immunotherapies and targeted therapies have been approved for the treatment of metastatic melanoma based on clinical studies. However, in clinical practice, it is not easy to contextualize clinical study data. “Important issues arise when treating real world patients with immunotherapies,” said session chair John B. A. G. Haanen, MD, PhD, of the Netherlands Cancer Institute.
One-Third of Patients With Advanced Melanoma Survive at Least 5 Years After Nivolumab Treatment
The news is good from the longest follow-up survival study of patients with advanced melanoma who were treated with the anti–programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1) agent nivolumab (Opdivo).1 Thirty-four percent of patients who received the drug in a phase I trial (CA909-003) were alive 5 years later. This study, which was presented at the 2016 Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), enrolled heavily pretreated patients with advanced melanoma.