Melanoma

The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) will recognize several individuals for their contributions to cancer research during its annual meeting, to be held April 1 to 5 in Washington, DC.

The first-in-class IDO1 inhibitor epacadostat (INCB024360), currently being investigated in combination with the PD-1 inhibitor pembrolizumab (Keytruda), could be an exciting new FDA approval for patients with stage III/IV unresectable or metastatic melanoma.

As immunotherapies become a greater part of the treatment paradigm of various cancers, researchers are spending more time developing ways to determine which patients will respond better to immunotherapy. Mutational load is one such biomarker that appears to have an impact on response to immunotherapy, particularly for checkpoint inhibitors.

A new drug application for the MEK inhibitor binimetinib as a treatment for patients with <em>NRAS</em>-mutant advanced melanoma has been withdrawn by Array BioPharma.

Jeffrey S. Weber, MD, PhD, deputy director of the Laura and Isaac Perlmutter Cancer Center, co-director of the Melanoma Program, and head of Experimental Therapeutics at NYU Langone Medical Center, discusses combination strategies for <em>BRAF</em>-mutant melanoma.

Michael A. Postow, MD, discusses&nbsp;argeting the activating receptors OX40, GITR, and CD137 to further stimulate the T cells to fight the tumor cells.

As the oncology community adapts to using immunotherapy agents more frequently in cancer treatments, the fear over immune-related adverse events (irAEs) prevents many clinicians from fully trusting immunotherapies.

Helmut Schaider, MD, discusses&nbsp;why drug resistance in melanoma may be due to epigenetic changes and not mutation-induced changes, as well as the role of immunotherapy/targeted therapy combinations in combating resistance.

Dabrafenib combined with trametinib continued to demonstrate durable efficacy for patients with <em>BRAF</em> V600E/K-mutant melanoma.

Michael A. Postow, MD, medical oncologist, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, discusses targets beyond PD-1 in melanoma.

The combination of nilotinib and trametinib proved to be synergistic in <em>BRAF/NRAS</em> wild-type melanoma,&nbsp;according to a recent study presented at the 2016 Society for Melanoma Research Congress.

The combination of dabrafenib and trametinib before and after surgery demonstrated a dramatic improvement in relapse-free survival compared with the standard of care for patients with stage IIIb/c or oligometastatic <em>BRAF</em>-mutant melanoma.

Stefani Spranger, PhD, discusses how the presence or absence of CD8-positive T cells can affect treatment approaches for patients with melanoma.

BRAF inhibitor encorafenib combined with the MEK inhibitor binimetinib reduced the risk of progression or death by 46% compared with vemurafenib for patients with <em>BRAF</em>-mutant unresectable melanoma.

Results from a safety, tolerability, and dose escalation phase Ib/II study involving intratumoral SD-101 and pembrolizumab have demonstrated that the combination was well-tolerated with no dose-limiting toxicities in early-stage melanoma.

Neoadjuvant therapy with the combination of nivolumab and ipilimumab is plausible and effective, but can induce a high level of adverse events calling for further research into better tolerated dosing schemes.

The addition of the PD-L1 inhibitor atezolizumab (Tecentriq) to the MEK inhibitor cobimetinib (Cotellic) and the BRAF inhibitor vemurafenib (Zelboraf) induced a high response rate for patients with <em>BRAF</em>-mutant unresectable melanoma.

Jeffery S. Weber, MD, PhD, discusses treatment considerations and options for 3 cases of patients with metastatic melanoma.

Igor Puzanov, MD, professor of oncology, Department of Medicine, Roswell Park Cancer Institute, discusses 2 clinical trials investigating immunotherapy combinations and sequencing in melanoma.

Among the new agents currently being explored in clinical trials, NKTR-214 stands out as a new cytokine therapy approach that could show additive benefit when combined with checkpoint inhibitors.&nbsp;

The addition of the PD-L1 inhibitor atezolizumab to the MEK inhibitor cobimetinib and the BRAF inhibitor vemurafenib induced a high response rate for patients with&nbsp;<em>BRAF</em>-mutant unresectable melanoma.

Treatment with&nbsp;the BRAF inhibitor encorafenib combined with the MEK inhibitor binimetinib improved median progression-free survival by 7.6 months&nbsp;compared with monotherapy with vemurafenib for patients with&nbsp;<em>BRAF</em>-mutant unresectable melanoma.

Omid Hamid, MD, chief, Translational Research and Immunotherapy, director, Melanoma Therapeutics, discusses current and emerging immunotherapeutic strategies in the field of melanoma during an interview at the 34th Annual Chemotherapy Foundation Symposium^TM.

In an interview, Yvonne Saenger, MD, discussed&nbsp;ongoing developments with immunotherapy in&nbsp;melanoma.

Caroline Robert, MD, PhD, head of the Dermatology Unit at the Institut Gustave-Roussy in Paris, discusses overall survival (OS) results of a recent study evaluating dabrafenib and trametinib in melanoma.