Immunotherapy with the programmed death-1 (PD-1) inhibitor nivolumab as second-line therapy prolonged survival in patients with nonsquamous non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who had experienced disease progression with standard platinum-based therapy. The patients in the nivolumab group lived an average of 3 months longer compared with patients receiving docetaxel in [ Read More ]
Nivolumab appears to be an effective immunotherapy, improving overall survival (OS) in patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma (mRCC) compared with currently available therapies, according to a prospective biomarker study. Moreover, the study found that nivolumab was effective in both programmed death-1 ligand 1 (PD-L1)-positive (PD-L1+) and PD-L1–negative (PD-L1–) patients. [ Read More ]
Oncologists looking to learn about immunotherapy didn’t have to go very far at the American Society of Clinical Oncology Annual Meeting. Many of the highest-impact presentations this year, including a plenary session abstract, the Karnofsky Award, and the Science of Oncology Award, focused on cancer therapy’s most exciting field. Checkpoint [ Read More ]
First PD-1 Blocking Drug to Receive Agency Approval The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted accelerated approval to pembrolizumab for the treatment of patients with advanced or unresectable melanoma who are no longer responding to other drugs. Melanoma, which accounts for approximately 5% of all new cancers in the [ Read More ]
Dr Puzanov is currently an associate professor of medicine at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine and the director of melanoma clinical research at Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center in Nashville, TN. He received his MD from Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic. His major interests are phase 1 drug development with emphasis [ Read More ]
Sangmee Bae, MD, is a Resident in the Internal Medicine Department at the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles, California. Bartosz Chmielowski, MD, PhD, is Clinical Assistant Professor in the Division of Hematology and Medical Oncology of the University of California at Los Angeles. He specializes in the [ Read More ]
For decades, chemotherapy, radiation therapy, and excisional surgery have served as the mainstays of cancer treatment. While often effective, these treatments affect healthy as well as neoplastic cells and therefore cause many unintended side effects, some of which may be life-threatening. Even after treatment, a substantial proportion of patients experience [ Read More ]
The idea of harnessing a patient’s own defenses and actively augmenting a deficient immune response to help fight disease has been implemented since the 18th century. Adoption of immunotherapy into clinical practice has been difficult until recently, when many late-stage clinical trials demonstrating an overall survival (OS) advantage in melanoma [ Read More ]
Melanoma experts gathered at the second annual World Cutaneous Malignancies Congress to debate the optimal means of treating melanoma using the new agents and to share predictions about the future treatment landscape in metastatic melanoma. Their insights are shared in this report. Metastatic Melanoma: Which Drug First? Despite excitement over [ Read More ]
With the recent advancements in the treatment of patients with metastatic melanoma, in particular with immunomodulating therapies, the development of unique immune-related side effects has posed novel management challenges. The first drug in this class to receive FDA approval for the treatment of unresectable stage III or IV melanoma is [ Read More ]
