Immunotherapy agents set to transform melanoma treatment
Speaking at the national Melanoma Summit in Auckland, a Los Angeles-based melanoma expert has told delegates that a new
class of anti-cancer agents, known as immunotherapies, is transforming the treatment of patients with metastatic
melanoma – melanoma that has spread throughout the body.
Antoni Ribas, Professor of Medicine, Surgery, and Molecular and Medical Pharmacology at the University of California Los
Angeles, has been the lead investigator on several large clinical trials of cutting-edge cancer treatments, including
targeted therapies and immunotherapies.
Targeted therapies include BRAF and MEK inhibitors, such as vemurafenib, cobemetinib, dabrafenib and trametinib, which
more precisely identify and kill cancer cells. Immunotherapies use the body’s own immune system to attack the tumour.
One group of immunotherapy agents, including the drugs pembrolizumab and nivolumab, bind to and block a molecule called
PD-1 to “take the brakes off” the immune system and allow the body to detect and destroy cancer cells.
Professor Ribas says that although targeted therapies were an important advance in cancer treatment and the majority of
patients obtain benefit from these agents, at least initially, there is growing evidence that immunotherapy drugs are
better than other treatment strategies for a subset of patients with metastatic melanoma.
“Some patients are going for years without a relapse. We’re very conservative about how we call things, but it’s
possible that some are cured.”
There is also the potential to use immunotherapies in combination with targeted agents and chemotherapy to achieve an
even better response.
Professor Ribas says the advances in melanoma treatment didn’t happen by chance.
“We’re taking science from the lab to the patient and starting a series of combination studies to be able to overcome
the barriers for patients who don’t respond.
“In addition to melanoma, immunotherapy has potential in a wide range of other cancers; clinical trials have studied
immunotherapy agents in 30 different types of cancer, with evidence of activity in 15 of these.”
Ends