New Drug Extends Lives of Melanoma Patients
June 7, 2010 (Chicago) -- A new drug that revs up the immune system to attack cancer cells extended the lives of people with advanced melanoma by an average of nearly four months in late-stage testing.
That may not sound like much, but given that "average survival [for metastatic melanoma] is six to nine months, on average, an additional four months is a very large difference for these patients," says one of the study's leaders, Steven O'Day, MD. He is director of the melanoma program at the Angeles Clinic and Research Institute in Los Angeles.
It's the first time any treatment has been shown to improve survival times in metastatic melanoma patients in rigorous late-stage clinical testing, he says.
O'Day presented findings on the drug, called ipilimumab, at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO). They were simultaneously published in the June 5 online issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.
Melanoma is the deadliest type of skin cancer and is expected to take the lives of about 8,700 Americans this year. It is treatable if caught early, but once it spreads (metastasizes), it is rarely cured and typically kills within a year.
Patients have few treatment options. Chemotherapy drugs used to treat advanced melanoma shrink only about 15% of tumors. Interleukin-2 (IL-2), the standard treatment, stimulates the immune system to attack and kill cancer cells. Tumors shrink in one in four patients with advanced melanoma who get this treatment, but only about 6% to 11% live for five years.
As a result, researchers have been searching for new options. At last year's ASCO meeting, researchers reported that a vaccine known as gp100 that trains the immune system to seek out and attack cancer cells appeared to extend the time until cancer progressed.
Ipilimumab is a human monoclonal antibody that targets a molecule called CTLA-4 on the surface of T-cells. CTLA-4 acts like a brake to the immune system. Blocking the brake with ipilimumab unleashes the T-cells so they can go out and attack cancer cells, O'Day explains.
Go there...http://www.webmd.com/melanoma-skin-cancer/news/20100607/new-drug-extends-lives-of-melanoma-patients?src=RSS_PUBLIC
Good news, but I'm surprised that there has been so little change in Melanoma Cancer Treatments since my Dad Died from it in 1961.
Don
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