Drug Combination Proves More Effective for Patients with Advanced Stage 3 Melanoma
Patients with advanced stage 3 melanoma that has spread to the regional lymph nodes but not yet to distant organs appear to benefit from a novel combination of two drugs rather than just one as currently applied in standard practice, researchers found.
According to Ahmad Tarhini, MD, PhD, director of the cutaneous clinical and translational research team at Moffitt Cancer Center, a recent trial presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology annual meeting found that the combination of the drugs vidutolimod and pembrolizumab administered before surgery stimulates the immune system to fight cancer while also shrinking the tumor.
This reduces the risk of recurrence after surgery in patients and de-escalates the extent of the surgery, the study found.
“This is an important step in our efforts to improve neoadjuvant systemic therapy approaches to locoregionally advanced melanoma by enhancing efficacy while minimizing adverse side effects,” Tarhini said. “[The study] demonstrated a very encouraging pathologic response rate and event free survival rate justifying the conduction of a definitive phase 3 clinical trial.”
The study enrolled patients with advanced melanoma that present with bulky cancer that can be surgically removed but has a high risk of recurrence and death following surgery. According to Tarhini, combining the two drugs increased the number of patients who had their cancer completely eradicated at the time of surgery.
The treatment also increased the number of patients who had near-complete eradication of cancer at the time of surgery. Differences in toxicity rates, or side effects, were nominal in both patient groups who were administered both drugs and just one drug.
In short, the study is very promising for the future treatment of stage 3 melanoma, Tarhini said.
