Study Moves T-VEC Into Neoadjuvant Melanoma Setting
Source: OncLive, April 2016
Talimogene laherparepvec (T-VEC; Imlygic), an oncolytic viral immunotherapy approved for patients with melanoma, is being evaluated in a presurgical setting in a phase II clinical trial that may help set the stage for expanding the toolkit of neoadjuvant options for patients with the malignancy.1
Although new targeted and immunotherapy agents for patients with melanoma have been introduced in recent years in advanced and metastatic settings, there is a need for approaches that attack the disease earlier and prevent recurrence, said Robert H.I. Andtbacka, MD, the principal investigator for the T-VEC study. “I think it’s the next logical step for us to take in melanoma—to try to find better ways to activate the patient’s own immune system where the tumor is still in situ,” Andtbacka said in an interview with OncLive. “Many of our colleagues in other tumor sites such as breast cancer and colon cancer have done this for many, many years, so we’ve been lagging a little bit behind in melanoma. But now I think we have good, effective therapies that we can start to ask these neoadjuvant questions.”
Andtbacka, an associate professor of Surgery at the Huntsman Cancer Institute at the University of Utah, was a leading investigator on the pivotal clinical trial that led to the FDA’s approval of T-VEC in October 2015 for the local treatment of unresectable cutaneous, subcutaneous, and nodal melanoma lesions.