Response-adapted immunotherapy cost-effective, may push melanoma to ‘individualized care’

Source: Healio, November 2022

Response-adapted therapy in melanoma, which involves removal of certain immunotherapeutic agents in a combination, can reduce costs without a decrease in efficacy, according to a study.

Zachary Cartun, MD, head of clinical integration at Pulsenmore, noted that while combination therapy with nivolumab (Opdivo, Bristol Myers Squibb) and ipilimumab (Yervoy, Bristol Myers Squibb) have yielded significant improvements in melanoma outcomes, the expense of the combination can be prohibitive for some patients. In the current study, the researchers determined whether discontinuing ipilimumab could provide the same tumor response at a lower cost.

“Response-adapted treatment is exciting for several reasons,” Cartun, who was of the departments of radiology at both the University Hospital LMU Munich and the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School at the time of the study, told Healio. “Idealistically, it fits well into the notion of personalized medicine, with drug regimen and dosage dictated by the individual patient’s early response. It also leverages the multidisciplinary nature of medical care — in our case dermatology, oncology and radiology — by combining the most advanced features of each field to provide the best treatment.”
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