Nivolumab Combo Appears Tolerable in Poor Prognosis, Advanced Melanoma
Source: Cancer Network, July 2023
The benefit of nivolumab/ipilimumab plus single-agent nivolumab for unresectable advanced melanoma with poor prognostic characteristics was comparable in all-comers and patients with brain metastases.
Combination therapy with nivolumab (Opdivo) and ipilimumab (Yervoy) followed by nivolumab alone in the first line was tolerable across a clinically diverse patient population with advanced, unresectable melanoma with poor prognosis features, although the regimen was less effective among those with a higher ECOG performance status and certain disease subtypes, according to findings from the phase 3b CheckMate 401 (NCT02599402) trial published in Journal of Clinical Oncology.
Select any-grade treatment-related adverse effects (TRAEs) in the all-treated population included skin (56%), endocrine (43%), gastrointestinal (GI; 40%), hepatic (29%), renal (5%), and pulmonary (4%) toxicities. The most common grade 3 to 5 TRAEs were GI (16%), hepatic (15%), endocrine (11%), skin (7%), renal (2%), and pulmonary toxicities (1%). One patient with cutaneous melanoma had grade 5 acute kidney injury, and another with mucosal melanoma experienced grade 5 colitis.