Drug That Harnesses Body’s Own Immune System Produces Lasting Remissions For Melanoma Patients
Written By Deena Beasley, Reuters
Mar 3 (Reuters) – A drug that uses the body’s own immune system to kill cancer cells has produced lasting remissions – some as long as two years – in patients with melanoma that had spread to other parts of the body, according to data published on Monday.
Follow-up from an early-stage, 107-patient trial of the drug, Bristol-Myers Squibb’s nivolumab, found that a year after treatment, 62 percent of patients were alive. After two years, 43 percent were alive.
Patients with advanced melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer, have a median life expectancy of around a year, said Dr. F. Stephen Hodi, director of the Melanoma Treatment Center at Boston’s Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and one of the study’s senior authors.
“The durability of clinical benefit, now with long-term follow-up is fairly remarkable,” he said. “As well as the notion that somebody who stops the drug still gets a benefit.”
Patients in the Phase 1 trial, whose cancer had worsened despite prior treatment with standard drugs, were given intravenous infusions of nivolumab every other week for up to 96 weeks.
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