Skin Cancer Combination Therapy Shows Success in Trial

A new multidrug treatment for patients with stage IV melanoma has proven effective after a three-year clinical trial at the University of Colorado Cancer Center. The trial results were published in the journal Clinical Cancer Research.

The study was aimed at overcoming the immune suppression that occurs in some patients with metastatic melanoma — skin cancer that has spread to organs like the lungs.

Skin Cancer - Types, Causes, Symptoms, Diagnosis, Treatment & Prevention
Skin cancer is an abnormal growth of skin cells. It can develop due to a continuous exposure to sun over the years.

‘Drug combination therapy for stage IV melanoma patients showed good response and improved the one-year overall survival rate by 80%.’

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It is known that immunotherapy is effective for many melanoma patients, but it doesn’t work for everybody. Sometimes the tumors suppress the immune system and prevent the immune reaction.

To overcome this immune suppression, a new drug trial was designed to specifically target myeloid-derived suppressor cells and determine if that could improve immune responses to standard therapy.

Researchers examined the combination of the common immunotherapy drug pembrolizumab (Keytruda) with all-trans retinoic acid (ATRA), a chemotherapy drug that targets myeloid-derived suppressor cells.

Melanoma - Causes, Symptoms, Diagnosis, Treatment & Prevention
Melanoma of the skin is a dangerous type of skin cancer that usually appears as a cancerous mole due to exposure to the sun’s damaging UV rays.

They found that the drug combination is effective, with an overall response rate of 71%. Fifty percent of patients experienced a complete response, and the one-year overall survival rate was 80%.

Combination Therapies for Melanoma: New Standard of Care?

This combination drug getting to a 71% response rate is potentially a huge advance. The good news about the pembrolizumab-ATRA combination is also that it does not contribute to increased toxicity.

The most common side effect is a headache that goes away once the treatment is complete. The results of the study are very promising for metastatic melanoma patients who currently don’t have many options if traditional immunotherapy is not successful in treating their cancer.

Personalized Medicine
Personalized medicine is an advanced method to predict risk of a human to a disease and its early treatment. It is tailor-made precision medicine with least side effects. Pharmacogenomics is the novel concept based on which personalized medicine is designed.

The CU-discovered drug combination will now be rolled out to a larger population, the pharmaceutical company that manufactures pembrolizumab, is expanding the clinical trial to a wider patient population.

The wider trial is testing the pembrolizumab-ATRA combination in patients who have already failed other types of immunotherapies, making for a tougher hurdle than the CU trial that employed the combination as a first-line treatment.

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While the CU researchers await the results of the Merck study, they are celebrating the response rates of their initial trial, which were much higher than expected.

Source-Eurekalert