In Recent Decades, Immunotherapy Extended Advanced Melanoma Survival from Months to Years
Source: Cure Today, July 2022
Thanks to the advent of immunotherapy, average survival for patients with advanced melanoma is drastically better than it was decades ago, explained Dr. Jedd D. Wolchok, a medical oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City.
Wolchok explained that when he first started treating patients with melanoma in the year 2000, the average survival for someone with stage 4 disease was about seven months. Now that there are Food and Drug Administration-approved immune checkpoint inhibitors, average survival has increased to over six years.
However, that does not mean that the work is finished for treating these patients, according to Wolchok.