For the first time, researchers at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center — including former Damon Runyon-Lilly Clinical Investigator Jedd D. Wolchok, MD, PhD — have improved the survival rates of metastatic melanoma patients.
The breakthrough was made in a Phase III clinical trial involving 676 patients with late-stage, inoperable metastatic melanoma. Rather than attacking the disease directly, researchers used the drug ipilimumab to prompt the immune system to find and kill cancer cells. Patients who received ipilimumab, either on its own or in combination with other therapies, survived 10 months on average — 67% longer than those who received an alternative treatment.
Metastatic melanoma is the deadliest form of skin cancer, taking the lives of 8,600 Americans in 2009. Prior to this clinical trial, patients with an advanced form of the disease have had no second-line options. “It is the first study to show a survival benefit for metastatic melanoma…and it is proof that this first-in-class treatment is effective in cancer,” said F. Stephen Hodi, MD, director of the melanoma treatment center at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, “The next step is to focus on developing combination therapies to develop…more robust effects.”
WABC in New York interviewed patients and cancer reseachers involved with the clinical trial, including Dr. Wolchok:
