A new study on the combination of two drugs that activate the immune system is offering hope to skin cancer patients whose disease spreads to the brain.
In the study published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers reported the drug combo of ipilimumab, whose brand name is Yervoy, and nivolumab, or Opdivo, shrank brain tumors in many melanoma patients and prolonged life in a study of 94 people at 28 medical centers.
Melanoma — the most serious form of skin cancer — is more likely than most cancers to spread to the brain, and once it gets there, fewer than 20 percent of patients survive one year with traditional treatments, according to Dr. Hussein Tawbi, the first author of the study and an associate professor of melanoma medical oncology at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, the New York Times reported.
In the study, 82 percent were still alive after a year.
“This is great news,” Tawbi told the Times. “We can help a lot more melanoma patients, and hopefully we’ll be able to help a lot more patients in general with these results.”
About 91,270 new cases of melanoma are expected in the United States this year, along with 9,320 deaths from the disease, the Times reported.
Tawbi told the Times the new findings should change the standard of care, and that melanoma patients like those in the study should be offered the drug combination as part of their initial treatment.
The results do not apply to people with tumors that originate in the brain, like glioblastoma, the type of brain cancer that Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., is being treated for, the Times noted.
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