SKIN CANCERS

Stefani Spranger, PhD, post-doctoral fellow, Department of Pathology, The University of Chicago Medicine, discusses the significance of melanoma intrinsic β-catenin signaling on immune exclusion and resistance to immunotherapies.

Anna C. Pavlick, MD, associate professor, co-director, Melanoma Program, assistant director, Clinical Research Education, discusses a study that examined two immunotherapy agents, ipilimumab and nivolumab, in patients with melanoma.

Shirish Gadgeel, MD, Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute, discusses a phase III study examining afatinib versus erlotinib as a second-line treatment of patients with advanced squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) of the lung following first-line platinum-based chemotherapy.

The treatment of patients with metastatic melanoma has undergone a dramatic transformation since the approval of the CTLA-4 inhibitor ipilimumab in 2011.

Frontline nivolumab more than doubled progression-free survival (PFS), both as monotherapy and combined with ipilimumab compared with ipilimumab alone in patients with advanced melanoma, according to results from the phase III CheckMate-067 trial.

Patients with BRAF-mutant late-stage melanoma derive a lasting overall survival (OS) benefit from treatment with the combination of dabrafenib and trametinib compared with dabrafenib and placebo, according to the final results from the COMBI-d phase III double-blinded trial.

Treatment with the PD-1 inhibitor nivolumab demonstrated similar efficacy regardless of prior treatment with a BRAF inhibitor or ipilimumab in patients with BRAF mutant or wild type metastatic melanoma.

Taking the vitamin B3 pill nicotinamide could reduce the risk of recurrence for those with a history of non-melanoma skin cancer.

The PD-1 inhibitor nivolumab (Opdivo) has been has been assigned priority review designation from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as a treatment for previously untreated patients with unresectable or metastatic melanoma.

Despite their promise, checkpoint inhibitors are not effective in every patient, and research suggests the STING (stimulator of interferon genes) pathway may hold important clues as to why some tumors fail to respond.

Mark R. Middleton, MD, PhD, discusses the results of a phase I/IIa trial of IMCgp100, a bispecific immunotherapy, for the treatment of patients with melanoma.

Results from the phase II, double-blind CheckMate-069 clinical trial showed unprecedented response rates with ipilimumab combined with nivolumab in previously treated patients with metastatic melanoma.

Jeffrey S. Weber, MD, PhD, a senior member at Moffitt Cancer Center, discusses toxicities associated with immunotherapies for the treatment of patients with melanoma.

Ahmad Tarhini, MD, PhD, associate professor, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, compares two doses of ipilimumab (Yervoy).

Pembrolizumab (Keytruda) yielded significantly better outcomes compared with ipilimumab (Yervoy) in a randomized phase III trial of patients with advanced melanoma.

IMCgp100, an anti-CD3 antibody fragment fused to a gp100-specific T cell receptor, yielded long-lasting responses in patients with advanced melanoma.

A delay between the diagnosis of melanoma and needed surgery may evoke anxiety and psychological stress; although the impact on morbidity and mortality remains controversial.

Abnormal driver mutations contribute to tumor progression and have been prime targets for many therapeutic studies in oncology; however, researchers are focusing more and more on the less-studied passenger mutations and their role in tumor progression.

Despite the availability of several new agents in the past 5 years for the treatment of melanoma, patients with advanced melanoma still suffer poor prognoses.

Kevin B. Kim, MD, medical oncology, California Pacific Medical Center, discusses the outlook for T-VEC for the treatment of patients with melanoma.

Turning their experimental focus on the tumor microenvironment, the authors of a paper published in Clinical Cancer Research have shed light on the role of melanoma-associated tumor macrophages in resistance to BRAF V600E inhibitors.

According to the Skin Cancer Foundation, more than 3.5 million cases of nonmelanoma skin cancers (NMSCs) are treated in the United States annually, making it the most commonly encountered malignancy.

Mario E. Lacouture, MD, dermatologist, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, discusses the impact on quality of life of dermatologic adverse events.

A trial comparing frontline pembrolizumab with ipilimumab for the treatment of advanced melanoma has met its progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS) endpoints and will be stopped early.

Immunotherapy is a rapidly expanding approach to the treatment of melanoma, employing a number of strategies evident in the pipeline for immunotherapeutics.