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CancerNetwork and the journal ONCOLOGY present exclusive melanoma coverage from the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO). Below we present an exclusive interview with Michael B. Atkins, MD, who discusses some of the most important information to come out of this year's meeting and talks about the future of melanoma research. Interview Treatment of Melanoma: Latest Treatments and Emerging Therapies CancerNetwork: There seem to be two principal promising avenues of therapy now for patients with metastatic melanoma: targeted, oncogene-directed therapy, and immunotherapy. The mechanisms of action involved in these two approaches are very different. Could you briefly summarize what you see as the greatest strengths and weaknesses of the two approaches? Dr. Michael Atkins: The benefit of immunotherapies is that they can produce durable responses in a small subset of patients off the treatment and appear to work in patients with both BRAF mutant and BRAF wild-type melanomas. The benefit of the molecularly targeted therapies is they produce a high level of tumor shrinkage and survival benefits in a large proportion of patients with BRAF mutant melanomas. Those responses are likely short lived on a median of 6 to 8 months progression-free survival, but for patients with symptomatic disease who need a response, the high degree of response is a major benefit.
Click here to read more from this exclusive interview . . .
Highlights ASCO: MEK Inhibitors—Alone or Paired With a BRAF Inhibitor—Increase Options, Benefits for Patients With BRAF-Mutated Advanced Melanoma At the ASCO annual meeting, researchers presented persuasive evidence that a new class of targeted agents-MEK inhibitors-may warrant inclusion in the growing armamentarium for patients with advanced BRAF-mutated melanoma. ASCO: Programmed Death 1 (PD-1) Inhibitor One of the "Most Exciting" New Melanoma Agents The class of agents that target the programmed death 1 (PD-1) pathway was described at ASCO as "likely the most exciting new agents recently developed in melanoma." ASCO: Phase II/III Data Establish Dabrafenib as Second BRAF Inhibitor With Proven Efficacy in Metastatic Melanoma Mature data from a phase III trial of dabrafenib vs dacarbazine (DTIC) as well as a phase II study assessing intracranial response to dabrafenib establish the drug as the second BRAF inhibitor with proven efficacy in V600-mutated melanoma. ASCO: Expert Panel Explores Questions Regarding Drug Selection, Drug Sequencing in Advanced Melanoma The new therapies that became available for advanced melanoma over the past year—the anti-CTLA4 antibody ipilimumab (Yervoy) and the selective BRAF inhibitor vemurafenib (Zelboraf)—represent promising new options for these patients, whose prognosis was heretofore almost universally dismal. However, the advent of new treatment strategies has made treatment decisions more complex.
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