Melanoma

Jeffrey Weber, MD, PhD, discussed the data in support of discontinuing treatment in melanoma and how to properly follow these patients after they go off treatment.<br /> &nbsp;

Robert Andtbacka, MD,&nbsp;discusses the current use of T-VEC in melanoma and future directions with this type of treatment.

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.

Hussein A. Tawbi, MD, PhD, discusses why melanoma responds so well to immunotherapy.

Hussein A. Tawbi, MD,&nbsp;discusses the expansion of the treatment armamentarium for adjuvant melanoma and the next steps with research in this patient population.<br /> &nbsp;

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.

Igor Puzanov, MD, MSCI, FACP, discusses the current and potential future utility of T-VEC in patients with advanced-stage melanoma.

In long-term follow-up results from the&nbsp;COMBI-AD trial, the relapse-free survival benefit with&nbsp;adjuvant dabrafenib (Tafinlar) and trametinib (Mekinist) was confirmed in&nbsp;patients with resected stage III <em>BRAF</em>-mutant melanoma. The follow-up data were reported by Georgina Long, MBBS, PhD, during the 2018 ESMO Congress in Munich, Germany.

Hassane M. Zarour, MD,&nbsp;discussed the research surrounding manipulation of the gut microbiome to improve response to immunotherapy in melanoma and other tumor types.

Paolo A. Ascierto, MD, discusses how results from the COLUMBUS trial affect the treatment landscape for patients with BRAF-mutant melanoma.

Hassane M. Zarour, MD, discusses the addition of antibiotics to immunotherapy treatment in patients with melanoma.&nbsp;

James P. Allison, PhD, and Tasuku Honjo, MD, PhD, have been awarded the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their pioneering research that led to the use of immune checkpoint inhibitors in the treatment of cancer. The award was announced in a statement from the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet on Monday.

According to an announcement from Array BioPharma, the company developing the regimen, the European Commission approved the combination of encorafenib, a BRAF inhibitor, and binimetinib, a MEK inhibitor, for treatment of adult patients with&nbsp;<em>BRAF</em>&nbsp;V600&ndash;mutant unresectable or metastatic melanoma.

Paolo A. Ascierto, MD, discusses&nbsp;results from the COLUMBUS trial and sheds light on how physicians can use these findings when choosing treatments for their patients. He also shared his insights on the CheckMate 238 trial investigating nivolumab in the adjuvant setting.

Sanjiv S. Agarwala, MD, chairman of medical oncology at St. Luke&rsquo;s University Health Network, discusses the combination of immunotherapy and a histone deacetylase inhibitor in patients with melanoma, as well as other types of cancer.

Keith T. Flaherty, MD, discusses results for the combination of encorafenib and binimetinib in patients with&nbsp;<em>BRAF</em>-mutated melanoma investigated in the COLUMBUS trial. He also highlights the potential implications and next steps.

The combination of&nbsp;dabrafenib (Tafinlar) and trametinib (Mekinist) has gained approval from the European Commission for the adjuvant treatment of patients with&nbsp;<em>BRAF&nbsp;</em>V600&ndash;positive stage III melanoma following complete resection.

Joseph Stilwill, MD,&nbsp;addresses recent advancements in melanoma and the focus of research moving forward.

Sanjiv S. Agarwala, MD, discusses the promising activity seen with the combination of pembrolizumab and entinostat in patients with advanced melanoma, according to initial results from the ongoing ENCORE 601 trial.

Keith T. Flaherty, MD, professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, director of Clinical Research, Massachusetts General Hospital, discusses the rationale for combining agents like dabrafenib with trametinib or binimetinib with encorafenib for patients with melanoma.<br /> &nbsp;

Adjuvant nivolumab has been approved by the European Commission as a treatment for adult patients with&nbsp;completely resected melanoma with lymph node involvement or metastatic disease, regardless of <em>BRAF</em> mutation status,&nbsp;based on findings from the randomized phase III CheckMate-238 trial.

Patients aged &ge;62 years with melanoma were more likely to respond to treatment with pembrolizumab than younger patients, according to results published in <em>Clinical Cancer Research. </em>Investigators at The Wistar Institute in Philadelphia concluded that the risk for progression following anti&ndash;PD-1 therapy declined by 13% with each decade of life.

Paolo A. Ascierto, MD, National Tumour Institute &ldquo;Fondazione G. Pascale,&rdquo; Unit of Melanoma in Naples, Italy, discusses the promising results for nivolumab (Opdivo) in patients with melanoma.&nbsp;