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VIDEO: Combination immunotherapy responses in melanoma ‘a sign we’re on the right track’
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Gregory Daniels, MD, PhD, associate clinical professor of medicine, hematology-oncology, Moores Cancer Center, University of California San Diego, provides perspective on the progress and promise of immune therapies in melanoma.
“What we are up against now is not so much the problem that we have no therapies — it’s that we have a lot of therapies and how to choose from them,” he said.
After describing the mechanisms that distinguish immune therapies from targeted therapies, Daniels discusses new agents targeting the PD-1/PD-L1 pathway, as well as combination immunotherapy involving the agents, in context of the advances since early research.
“Now, when we are presented with a patient, we have a handful of treatment options that have a potential for long-term clinical benefit,” he said.
Daniels highlights “working backwards” as one approach clinicians can use when selecting therapies to prioritize “long-term treatment-free disease control,” then details specific combination regimens, along with response rates and toxicities.
He underscores the need for “institutional awareness” of the risks related to combinations, but also emphasizes the “amazing” benefits that stand to be reaped.
“It appears that we’re getting a significant fraction of patients who are able to go through these treatments and not need anything else down the road,” Daniels said. “This has really been the long dream, the hope in oncology.”
He closes by commenting on characteristics that make a patient an appropriate candidate and outlining the treatment options that exist if they are not.