Measuring Effects of Immune Checkpoint Inhibition in Advanced Melanoma via TFS

Source: Oncology Learning Network, October 2019

Study findings suggest that treatment-free survival (TFS) may be used to measure the effects of immune checkpoint inhibitor (ICI) therapy in patients with advanced melanoma (J Clin Oncol. 2019 Sep 9. Epub ahead of print).

“Outcome measures that comprehensively capture attributes of immuno-oncology agents, including prolonged treatment-free time and persistent treatment-related adverse events (TRAEs), are needed to complement conventional survival end points,” explained Meredith M. Regan, ScD, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, Massachusetts, and colleagues, who sought to create an outcome measure to characterize time without systemic anticancer therapy that can be achieved via immune checkpoint inhibition.

Using data from the CheckMate 067 and 069 clinical trials of nivolumab and ipilimumab, Dr Regan et al evaluated TFS (ie, the area between Kaplan-Meier curves for time to ICI therapy cessation and time to subsequent systemic therapy initiation or death) among patients with advanced melanoma