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Cutaneous melanomas – at last new hope!
Promising new advances have been made in the treatment of metastatic melanoma – a form of cancer with a particularly poor prognosis. A monoclonal antibody known as ipilimumab has shown very encouraging results for a cancer which until now had very limited treatment options.
The study presented in Chicago was based on 676 patients suffering from advanced forms of the disease, who were divided into three groups. The first group was given ipilimumab in combination with a therapeutic vaccine with a proven track record in combating tumours. The second group received only the monoclonal antibody, and the third group only the vaccine.
After a year of treatment, around half the patients being treated with ipilimumab were still alive, compared with only 25% in the group treated by vaccinotherapy. The median survival time was shown to be 6.4 months for the group treated exclusively by vaccinotherapy but 10.1 months for the other two groups. These results were described as remarkable by Dr Steven O’Day of the Faculty of Medicine, University of Southern California. In fact, until now there were no therapies available for the most serious cases. Now, for the first time, it has been possible to demonstrate an increase in the global survival rate of metastatic melanoma.
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