Skin Cancer & 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 interview we discuss a recent study that identified genetic mechanisms of immunoresistance to treatment with anti-PD-1 antibodies.

Patients with metastatic melanoma may benefit from the addition of a local tumor-targeted treatment in addition to ipilimumab.

Obtaining blood biopsies instead of invasive tissue biopsies may be less risky for patients, faster, and cost less.

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.

Along with gene expression signatures from a 15-loci panel, tumor diameter and specific driver mutations predict metastasis risk and survival among patients with uveal melanoma.

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 promising results of the anti–PD-L1 agent avelumab in patients with metastatic Merkel cell carcinoma who had previously been treated with chemotherapy.

Inflammatory arthritis and sicca syndrome appear to be immune-related adverse events among some patients undergoing cancer treatment with the immune checkpoint inhibitors nivolumab and ipilimumab.

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.

Trametinib, which is approved by the FDA for melanoma and other cancers, may block viral infection by stopping Merkel cell polyomavirus transcription and replication.

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.

The UV radiation resistance-associated tumor suppressor gene coordinates DNA repair and might predict skin cancer risk, according to research published in the journal Molecular Cell.

It now turns out that Bim, a downstream signaling molecule of the PD-1 pathway, may hold the clue to which patients may be successful on immunotherapy for metastatic melanoma.

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.

Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC) may provide an unlimited number of phenotypically defined, functional and expandable autologous antigen-specific T cells with the characteristics needed to combat cancer.

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.

A 37-year old man presents with a bluish lesion in the right arm. After further assessment, a biopsy is performed. What is your diagnosis?

Patients with metastatic Merkel cell carcinoma treated with pembrolizumab (Keytruda, Merck) as a first-line therapy had durable responses in a phase II clinical trial.