Increased Melanoma Survival With Immunotherapy Followed by Targeted Therapy
Source: Technology Networks Cancer Research, September 2022
A clinical trial led by clinicians at Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center showed a remarkable 20 percent advantage in the two-year overall survival rate for people with advanced melanoma who first received immunotherapy (72 percent survival rate) versus those who initially got targeted therapies (52 percent survival rate). Progression-free survival, where the cancer is stable or improving, was also trending in favor of those who started on immunotherapy.
The multicenter, phase III trial, DREAMseq, was led by oncology professor Michael Atkins, MD, deputy director of Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center, on behalf of the ECOG-ACRIN Cancer Research Group and sponsored by the National Cancer Institute. The findings appeared September 27, 2022, in the Journal of Clinical Oncology and were presented preliminarily at the inaugural American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Virtual Plenary Series in November 2021.
“While still a potentially devastating disease, advances in treatment for patients with metastatic melanoma have been nothing short of remarkable this past decade,” Atkins said. “In addition to DREAMseq, results from a major nationwide clinical trial (1) that enrolled patients at Georgetown Lombardi showed that if an immunotherapy called pembrolizumab was given both before and after, rather than after just surgery to remove tumor tissue, the two-year tumor-free survival rate increased from 49% to 72%. These two findings, along with other recent advances, point to significant promise for many people with melanoma.”