Jason Luke on Significance of Biomarker Development for Immunotherapy in Melanoma

Source: OncLive, January 2016

Although nivolumab (Opdivo) and ipilimumab (Yervoy) together demonstrate superior survival in previously untreated patients with advanced melanoma, the combination comes with additional toxicity and an increased price tag, says Jason Luke, MD, assistant professor of Medicine at the University of Chicago Medicine.

“There have been several studies designed around trying to predict which patients are most likely to benefit from anti–PD-1 or immunotherapy combinations. I really think that is going to be an essential part of the future approach to treatment, says Luke. “Not all patients respond to these treatments. There are additional toxicities with the combinations, and there are also cost issues because of how catastrophically expensive these drugs are. We really need to know which patients are most likely to respond and which aren’t.”

The phase III CheckMate-067 trial found that, after 9 months of follow-up, the median progression-free survival (PFS) was 11.5 months with the combination of nivolumab and ipilimumab, 6.9 months for nivolumab monotherapy, and 2.9 months for single-agent ipilimumab. The combination reduced the risk of progression by 58% compared with ipilimumab (HR, 0.42; P <.0001).