SYDNEY, Feb. 18 (Xinhua) -- A groundbreaking Australian clinical trial has shown that a majority of melanoma patients whose cancer has spread to the brain can be cured with combination immunotherapy.
The Melanoma Institute Australia (MIA) on Tuesday released seven-year follow-up results from a clinical trial that was conducted between 2014 and 2017 showing that long-term survival is achievable for advanced skin cancer patients.
Participants in the initial trial with stage four melanoma that had spread -- or metastasized -- to the brain were treated with either combination immunotherapy using the drugs nivolumab and ipilimumab or with single-agent immunotherapy using nivolumab alone.
The long-term data revealed a survival rate of 51 percent among participants who were given the combination immunotherapy as a first-line treatment.
Among all participants given the combined immunotherapy, the seven-year survival rate was 48 percent.
Patients with advanced melanoma that had spread to the brain were previously expected to survive for only 16 weeks.
"This proves we have achieved long-term disease control in this group of advanced melanoma patients," Georgina Long, medical director of the MIA and lead author of the study, said.
"We are now confident these patients are cured, a term not used lightly in cancer. This combination immunotherapy should now become standard of care for melanoma patients with brain metastasis," she said.
The initial findings from the trial released in 2018 showed a 46 percent response rate for participants given combination immunotherapy compared to 20 percent for those on single-agent immunotherapy.
Grant McArthur, co-senior author on the study from Melbourne's Peter MacCallum Cancer Center, said the results are "fundamentally changing" how researchers think about melanoma that has spread to the brain.
Long and colleague Richard Scolyer, who stepped down as co-medical director of the MIA earlier in February, were named the 2024 Australians of the Year for their life-saving research. ■
