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According to the latest Annual Report to the Nation on the Status of Cancer, cancer death rates have declined in men, women, and children across all cancer types, and have continued to decline between 1999 and 2016. In a special section of this year’s report, however, data show that both cancer incidence and death rates were higher in women aged 20 to 49 compared to male counterparts.

Robert L. Ferris, MD, PhD, Co-Physician Editor in Chief, <em>Targeted Therapies in Oncology</em>,<em>&nbsp;</em>discusses<em>&nbsp;</em>the<em>&nbsp;</em>evolving<em>&nbsp;</em>role of immunotherapy in melanoma and non&ndash;small cell lung cancer, where by it is now the dominant therapeutic approach in these diseases in progressively earlier lines of therapy.

Precision medicine has produced some dramatic successes in patients with advanced cancer. With developments in molecular profiling, targeted therapies are being applied to multiple tumors, most notably in advanced melanoma, NSCLC, and several types of leukemia. Alison Schram, MD, and David M. Hyman, MD, point out the challenges in determining the proportion of patients who will benefit from receiving targeted therapies.

After decades of being considered the &ldquo;graveyard of drug development,&rdquo; melanoma has now become one of the hottest fields in oncologic research. In response to this rapid change in the treatment landscape, the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer has issued updated consensus guidelines to help clinicians stratify patients, choose optimal treatment regimens, and manage immune-related adverse events in patients with stage II to IV disease.

There has been a rapid expansion to the treatment landscape for adjuvant melanoma and there is no head-to-head comparative data for the challenge of selecting between immunotherapy and targeted therapy. When selecting a type of therapy, communicating relative merits and risks of both options to patients is necessary in making a shared decision, said&nbsp;Hussein Tawbi, MD, PhD.