Cutaneous melanoma incidence is rising. Early diagnosis and treatment administration are key for increasing the chances of survival. For patients with locoregional advanced melanoma that can be treated with complete resection, adjuvant-and more recently neoadjuvant-with targeted therapy-BRAF and MEK inhibitors-and immunotherapy-anti-PD-1-based therapies-offer opportunities to reduce the risk of relapse and distant metastases.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPurpose: In the phase III CheckMate 238 study, adjuvant nivolumab significantly improved recurrence-free survival (RFS) and distant metastasis-free survival versus ipilimumab in patients with resected stage IIIB-C or stage IV melanoma, with benefit sustained at 4 years. We report updated 5-year efficacy and biomarker findings.
Patients And Methods: Patients with resected stage IIIB-C/IV melanoma were stratified by stage and baseline programmed death cell ligand 1 (PD-L1) expression and received nivolumab 3 mg/kg every 2 weeks or ipilimumab 10 mg/kg every 3 weeks for four doses and then every 12 weeks, both intravenously for 1 year until disease recurrence, unacceptable toxicity, or withdrawal of consent.
Central nervous system (CNS) dissemination is a severe complication in cancer and a leading cause of cancer-related mortality. Brain metastases (BMs) are the most common types of malignant intracranial tumors and are reported in approximately 25% of patients with metastatic cancers. The recent increase in incidence of BMs is due to several factors including better diagnostic assessments and the development of improved systemic therapies that have lower activity on the CNS.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSince the approval of immune checkpoint anti-programmed cell death protein 1 antibodies (pembrolizumab and nivolumab) and anti-cytotoxic T-lymphocyte-associated protein 4 (ipilimumab) in combination or monotherapy, significant advances have been made in the treatment of metastatic melanoma. The nonspecific immune stimulation resulting from these drugs can case a wide range of side effects in many organs including the nervous system, named immune-related adverse events. Few immune-related encephalitis associated with these antibodies have been described in the literature.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFReal-world data on BRAF mutation frequency in advanced melanoma are lacking in Spain. Moreover, data available on clinicopathological profile of patients with advanced BRAF-mutant melanoma are currently limited. This study aimed to assess the frequency of BRAF V600 mutations in Spanish patients with advanced or metastatic melanoma and to identify clinical and histopathological features associated with BRAF-mutated tumors.
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