Rare melanoma type highly responsive to immunotherapy

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Drugs that reactivate a patient's own immune

system to target  are rapidly changing the face of cancer therapy. Pembrolizumab and nivolumab have been approved to treat , and others are in development. These drugs block the interaction between the proteins PD-1 and PD-L1. During cancer development, PD-1 and PD-L1 inhibit the immune system and allow tumor  to escape detection and continue to grow. By blocking their interaction, immune-activating drugs restimulate the immune system to detect and destroy cancer cells.
Scientists previously believed that the tissue architecture of desmoplastic melanomas would reduce the ability of  to infiltrate the tumor area and limit the effectiveness of immune-activating drugs. However, based on anecdotal reports of favorable responses, a group of researchers including Moffitt's Zeynep Eroglu, M.D., Jane Messina, M.D., and Dae Won Kim, M.D., hypothesized that  with desmoplastic melanoma may be more responsive to anti-PD-1/PD-L1 therapies than previously assumed, and explored this in the largest group of immunotherapy-treated desmoplastic melanoma patients studied to date.
To test their hypothesis, the researchers analyzed 60 patients with advanced/metastatic desmoplastic melanoma who were previously treated with a  that targets either PD-1 or PD-L1. They discovered that 42 patients had a significant  to treatment. Approximately half of these patients had a complete response in which their tumors entirely disappeared, and the remainder had a partial response, with significant reduction of their tumors. Seventy-four percent of patients were still alive more than two years after beginning treatment. This 70 percent response rate is one of the highest reported for anti-PD-1/PD-L1 therapies to date, and is even higher than response rates commonly observed in patients with other subtypes of melanoma, which are approximately 35 to 40 percent.