Melanoma

An individual’s clinical risk factors could help guide skin cancer screening and identify those at high risk for melanoma who could benefit from increased surveillance.

Myocarditis is a rare and sometimes lethal complication of combination immune checkpoint blockade for metastatic melanoma.

Results of a meta-analysis revealed that BRAF/MEK and PD-1 inhibition significantly improved survival in BRAF-mutated melanoma compared with other treatments.

Waiting as long as 3 months from a melanoma diagnosis to sentinel lymph node biopsy had no effect on 5-year survival or sentinel node positivity rate, according to the results of a study.

Ironically, the patients who can benefit the most from CLND in terms of regional nodal basin disease control are the patients who are least likely to experience a survival benefit.

CLND as standard of care for patients with SLN-positive metastatic melanoma is supported by a wealth of compelling prospective data.

A large percentage of patients with metastatic melanoma in Europe may not have access to innovative medicines used to treat the disease, according to the results of a survey.

Melanoma patients diagnosed prior to age 18 had a higher survival vs adult patients, despite having similar tumor depth and more frequent nodal metastases.

Lack of knowledge and a belief that dark skin protects against skin cancer are among the barriers preventing minority, uninsured, and immigrant populations from adopting methods for skin cancer prevention.

The use of sunscreen with an SPF of 15 or greater was associated with about a 30% reduction in the risk for melanoma among a group of Norwegian women.

Oral vitamin D intake was associated with an increased risk for basal cell carcinoma, but not melanoma, according to two large cohort studies.

Updated efficacy results of the coBRIM trial showed that cobimetinib plus vemurafenib improved survival in patients with BRAF V600–mutated advanced melanoma.

There is currently not enough evidence to assess the balance of benefits and harms of a visual skin examination by a clinician to screen for skin cancer in asymptomatic adults.

In this video we discuss the use of concurrent immunotherapy and stereotactic radiosurgery for treatment of melanoma brain metastases.

Undergoing immunotherapy within a month of stereotactic radiosurgery resulted in an improved response to treatment for patients with melanoma brain metastases.

In this video we discuss 3-year results of the COMBI-d trial, which studied dabrafenib and trametinib in patients with unresectable or metastatic BRAF-mutated melanoma.

In this video we discuss 3-year overall survival data from the KEYNOTE-001 trial, which studied the anti–PD-1 antibody pembrolizumab in patients with advanced melanoma.

The MEK inhibitor binimetinib resulted in improved progression-free survival and response rates vs dacarbazine in patients with NRAS-mutated metastatic melanoma.

A combination of the checkpoint inhibitors nivolumab and ipilimumab continues to demonstrate superior clinical activity vs ipilimumab monotherapy in treatment-naive patients with advanced melanoma.

Details of a first-in-human case report showed that a patient with melanoma was able to achieve a durable complete response with the combination of two types of immunotherapy.

Adding total body irradiation to chemotherapy prior to the adoptive cell transfer of TILs had no effect on tumor regression in patients with metastatic melanoma.

Treatment with the anti–PD-1 antibody pembrolizumab yielded good long-term survival outcomes in a phase Ib trial of patients with advanced melanoma.

Through the emergence of new immunotherapies, treatment of melanoma is undergoing a long-awaited revolution. Ongoing research will clarify the outlines of the place that intralesional therapies will occupy in the therapeutic armamentarium in the years ahead.

Perhaps the greatest attraction and chief benefit of intratumoral therapies is their ability to synergize with systemic checkpoint therapies and accelerate the development of a lymphoid infiltrate and perhaps secondary lymphoid structures in vivo, which in turn can result in systemic mobilization of a T-cell response: the local injection–global effect model.

A recent trial found no survival difference in patients with melanoma with a positive sentinel lymph node biopsy who underwent complete lymph node dissection compared with those who did not undergo dissection. However, the trial failed to achieve the required number of events and is, therefore, underpowered.

More than one-third of patients with advanced melanoma were still alive 5 years after starting treatment with the anti-PD-1 immunotherapy nivolumab, according to long-term phase I data.

A new study has shown that algorithms of dermoscopic criteria used to detect melanoma had only modest levels of accuracy and lacked interobserver agreement among a group of regular dermoscopy users.

People who are carriers of two variants of MC1R, a gene that regulates pigmentation, were at increased risk for melanoma regardless of previous UV radiation exposure.

In patients with melanoma, lower vitamin D levels were associated with poorer survival outcomes, according to a prospective study, independent of C-reactive protein levels.

The number of moles, or nevi, a patient had was not related to the likelihood that they had melanoma, according to the results of a new study.