Immunotherapy, particularly with checkpoint inhibitors like the PD-1 inhibitor nivolumab and CTLA-4 inhibitor ipilimumab, has transformed melanoma treatment by leveraging the body’s immune system to target and destroy cancer cells. However, despite its effectiveness, this treatment can lead to severe grade 3–5 immune-related adverse events (irAEs), affecting over a third…

Most patients with newly diagnosed melanoma present with early-stage disease. Although surgical resection can lead to a cure for most of these patients, a high-risk subset faces the risk of relapse and death from melanoma. However, this subset may benefit from approved systemic adjuvant therapy. The question is, how do…

New research from the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center shows that age-related changes in the skin that make it less elastic increase the release of a protein that may help foster melanoma metastases. The protein, ICAM1 helps stimulate blood vessel growth in a tumor and also makes blood vessel more…

A new study has shown that delays in diagnosis of melanoma in Europe due to COVID-19 lockdowns may have contributed to the loss of more than 100,000 life-years and costs that exceed £6 billion, mostly related to loss of productivity. The research, published last week in a new JAMA Network…

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted accelerated approval to lifileucel (Amtagvi, Iovance Biotherapeutics), a tumor-derived autologous T cell immunotherapy, for adult patients with unresectable or metastatic melanoma. It is the first, and the only one-time, T cell therapy to receive FDA approval for a solid tumor cancer. The…

New research highlights the different mechanisms of action of two immunotherapy combination therapies for advanced melanoma. An anti-PD-1/LAG-3 drug combination required the presence of CD4 T cells for its anticancer effects, in both cutaneous melanoma and brain metastases melanoma, while the anti-PD-1/CTLA-4 combination did not. “These observations are of particular…

Exploratory analyses of data from the SWOG S1801 clinical trial of pembrolizumab in advanced melanoma shows researchers observed major pathological response exceeding 50% in patients with stage III-IV resectable disease. The results were presented Monday at the European Society of Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress 2023 in Madrid, by Sapna P.…

Non-melanoma skin cancer (NMSC) causes more deaths globally each year than melanoma, which is considered a more aggressive form of skin cancer, shows research presented this week at the European Academy of Dermatology and Venerology Congress 2023. The higher number of deaths can be attributed to the substantially higher incidence…

A multicenter Phase II clinical trial showed that combination immunotherapy drug therapy with ipilimumab (an anti-CTLA-4 drug) and nivolumab (an anti-PD-1 therapy) is an effective second-line therapy for patients with melanoma that has progressed on PD-1 inhibitors alone.  It is the first randomized study showing that continuing PD-1 therapy beyond…

A multi-center study conducted in Spain, reported in Nature Metabolism, has shown that a chronic angina drug improves melanoma treatment efficacy in mouse models of the disease—the most deadly of skin cancers. The research homed in on BRAF, a key genetic driver of the development of melanoma to discover why…

Potential new biomarkers could point to which metastatic melanoma patients will respond to immunotherapy treatment, according to work by scientists at the UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center. They found that increased levels of both a protein called CXCL13 and B cells are associated with improved survival on immunotherapy. These findings…

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden and the University of Copenhagen in Denmark have demonstrated how memory killer cells are formed in the skin and have shown how high levels of these cells in cancer tissue correlate with longer survival rates in people with melanoma. This particular from of T…

Researchers from UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center analyzed genetic changes in the organs of recently deceased patients to understand how metastatic cutaneous melanoma spreads in patients who have initially benefited from precision therapies. The team retrieved, within hours of death, tumors that had spread to various organs of 11 patients…

Researchers from King’s College London and Guy’s and St. Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust report that their newly developed class of immunotherapy has shown promising results against melanoma, the most aggressive form of skin cancer. The results, published in Nature Communications, show that an IgE antibody activates the immune response to…

Researchers have developed a personalized mRNA-based vaccine, mRNA-4157, that significantly delays disease recurrence in patients with resected high-risk melanoma when added to standard-of-care adjuvant pembrolizumab therapy. “For the first time in a randomized study with a control arm, the addition of an mRNA neoantigen vaccine appeared to augment the benefit…