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Soo Park, MD
Soo Park, MD
Posted: Tuesday, October 1, 2024
For patients with advanced melanoma, therapeutic management with the PD-1 inhibitor pembrolizumab continues to improve clinical outcomes compared with the CTLA-4 inhibitor ipilimumab, according to the results of the KEYNOTE-006 trial presented at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress 2024 (Abstract LBA44). The observed long-term clinical benefits with pembrolizumab support its use as a standard of care in this patient population, suggested Caroline Robert, MD, PhD, of the Gustave Roussy Cancer Center, Villejuif, France, and colleagues.
A total of 834 patients with stage III or IV melanoma were recruited for the study. All patients were previously treated with at least one line of therapy. They were randomly assigned to receive treatment with pembrolizumab (n = 556) or ipilimumab (n = 278). After their initial treatment, eligible patients were treated with a second course of pembrolizumab in the KEYNOTE-587 trial (n = 211).
The study authors reported a 32.7-month and 15.9-month median overall survival for patients treated with pembrolizumab and ipilimumab, respectively (hazard ratio [HR] = 0.71). In addition, 10-year overall survival rates of 34.0% and 23.6% were observed in these respective patient groups. Furthermore, treatment with pembrolizumab was superior to treatment with ipilimumab across all subgroups, as evident by the overall survival hazard ratios, they noted. Moreover, the median progression-free survival was increased with pembrolizumab (9.4 months) compared with ipilimumab (3.8 months, HR = 0.64). A 51.8-month median modified progression-free survival was observed in patients who received a second course of pembrolizumab therapy.
Disclosure: For full disclosures of the study authors, visit cslide.ctimeetingtech.com.
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