IMMUNOTHERAPY

The FDA has assigned a priority review designation to the PD-1 inhibitor pembrolizumab (MK-3475) as a treatment for patients with unresectable or metastatic melanoma following progression on ipilimumab.

A novel immunotherapeutic known as IMCgp100 induced clinical responses with manageable toxicity in patients with advanced melanoma.

Tomasz Beer, MD, FACP, professor of medicine, deputy director of the Knight Cancer Institute, Oregon Health and Science University, characterizes the immune-related adverse events associated with ipilimumab in a phase III metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer trial.

Smitha Krishnamurthi, MD, associate professor of medicine, Case Western Reserve University, describes GVAX for patients with metastatic pancreatic adenocarcinoma.

David F. McDermott, MD, associate professor, Department of Medicine, Harvard Medical School/Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, discusses PD-L1 expression in non-clear cell kidney cancer.

Talimogene laherparepvec (T-VEC) significantly improved durable response rates (DRR) but failed to extend overall survival (OS) in patients with advanced melanoma.

The first combination therapy for advanced melanoma received approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) January 2014.

Jedd D. Wolchok, MD, PhD, chief, Melanoma and Immunotherapeutics Service, Lloyd J. Old Chair for Clinical Investigation, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, explains immune checkpoint blockade.

Melanoma experts and researchers have gained ground in the development of novel and effective immunotherapies as well as targeted agents for those patients with metastatic melanoma who harbor specific tumor mutations.

Ryan J. Sullivan, MD, medical oncologist, Massachusetts General Hospital, gives an overview of new and emerging therapies for the treatment of metastatic melanoma.

Hassan Arshad, MD, assistant professor of oncology, head and neck surgeon, Department of Head and Neck Surgery/Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, Roswell Park Cancer Institute, discusses the future of treating head and neck cancer and the challenges behind treating the disease.

Henry M. Kuerer, MD, PhD, FACS, professor of surgery, Department of Surgical Oncology, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, discusses two ongoing trials that look promising for the treatment of patients with DCIS.

PD-L1 levels adequately predict response and clinical outcomes for PD-1 inhibitor MK-3475 in patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and melanoma.

The large phase III MAGRIT study investigating the MAGE-A3-specific vaccine GSK1572932A for patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) will be completely halted following an interim analysis that demonstrated a lack of benefit.

Meir Wetzler, MD, chief, Leukemia Section, Department of Medicine, Professor of Medicine, Department of Medicine, Roswell Park Cancer Institute, discusses a phase I trial that studies the side effects and immune response to DEC-205/NY-ESO-1 fusion protein CDX-1401 and decitabine in patients with myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) or acute myeloid leukemia

The oncolytic immunotherapeutic vaccine talimogene laherparepvec (T-VEC) promoted tumor shrinkage in 64% of patients with advanced melanoma, including a marked reduction in the size of uninjected metastatic lesions.

Nivolumab, a PD-1-specific antibody, has shown to produce long-term remissions with limited toxicity in patients with advanced melanoma, according to results from one of the longest follow ups to examine the drug.

The MAGE-A3-specific immunotherapeutic GSK1572932A failed to significantly extend disease-free survival (DFS) in patients with resected nonmetastatic non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who tested negative for a specific gene expression signature.

Screening for prostate-specific antigen (PSA) significantly cuts the death rate from prostate cancer, but at the same time, America’s medical community should work harder to avoid the screen’s potential pitfalls.

Robert Figlin, MD, FACP, professor of medicine and biomedical sciences, Steven Spielberg Family Chair in Hematology Oncology, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, discusses results from a single-arm phase II trial of the autologous dendritic cell immunotherapy AGS-003 plus standard treatment for patients with newly-diagnosed metastatic renal cell carcinoma

Renier J. Brentjens, MD, PhD, associate professor, chief, Cellular Therapeutics Center, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, discusses the outlook for CAR-modified T cells.

With the growing knowledge of immune system components, signaling processes, and regulatory networks, cancer immunotherapy has yielded increasingly favorable treatment outcomes.

While the concept of cancer-specific immunotherapy is not new, it recently has been proven feasible as a rational treatment for patients with some of the most challenging and difficult malignancies.

Harriet Kluger, MD, associate professor of medicine (medical oncology), associate director, Hematology/Oncology Fellowship Program, Yale Cancer Center, explains how immunotherapies are changing the treatment of melanoma.

The use of predictive biomarkers in cancer medicine may allow oncologists to target interventions to populations with greater response rates, affect sizes, and benefit-risk ratios.