Jeffrey Weber, MD, PhD, discusses the unmet needs professionals take into consideration when deciding treatment options for patients with melanoma.
Jeffrey Weber, MD, PhD, of NYU Langone Health spoke with CancerNetwork regarding the unmet needs for patients with melanoma and the binary treatment options for this group of patients.
Transcription:
So, the challenge in our business is which treatment to give them after surgery, what adjuvant treatment? It comes down to a particular binary choice, we either give them PD-1 antibodies like nivolumab (Opdivo) or pembrolizumab (Keytruda) or you give them BRAF/MEK drugs and dabrafenib/trametinib are the 2 approved for that indication. So, the unmet need is what do you do after surgery for a high-risk patient? The other unmet need is what do you do in metastatic disease? And there, it comes down to what’s your front-line treatment, and generally that’s immunotherapy. Then the question is, if you’re BRAF-mutated, what do you do if you fail immunotherapy? If you fail (ipilimumab [Yervoy] plus nivolumab), you don’t have a lot of options. So, that’s where BRAF/MEK drugs will come in handy and have been very useful.
Data Show Barriers to Immunotherapy Access in Clear Cell RCC Population
December 1st 2023Findings from a retrospective analysis indicate that treatment in non-academic cancer centers correlates with a decreased rate of immunotherapy use among patients with advanced clear cell renal cell carcinoma.
Oncology On-The-Go Podcast: ASCO 2023 Recap
June 19th 2023Experts from University of California, Los Angeles Health and Mayo Clinic discuss key data presented at the 2023 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting in the gynecologic and gastrointestinal cancer spaces and how they may impact patient care.
Trastuzumab Deruxtecan Showcases Clinical Efficacy in HER2+ Gynecological Cancers
November 20th 2023Data from the phase 2 DESTINY-PanTumor02 trial support trastuzumab deruxtecan as a potential treatment for patients with gynecologic HER2-expressing tumors that have progressed on prior therapy.