FDA approves new immunotherapy treatment for advanced melanoma

Photo credit – Oregon Health Sciences University
Fritz Liedtke

CANCER DIGEST – March 25, 2022 – There’s new hope for patients with an aggressive form of skin cancer that can’t be treated with surgery. 

The FDA approved a new treatment regimen that combines two immunotherapy drugs that significantly extends progression-free survival.

The FDA approval follows the results of the RELATIVITY-047 clinical trial that involved 714 patients with advance, previously untreated melanoma. 

Patients were randomly assigned to receive the combination therapy of relatlimab and nivolumab or nivolumab alone. Results of the trial were published in The New England Journal of Medicine on Jan. 6, 2022.

At one year after starting the trial, 48 percent of those in the combination therapy survived with the cancer not processing, called progression-free survival. That compared to 37 percent of the nivolumab group surviving that long without cancer progression. 

Could hydroxychloroquine make chemotherapy more effective in certain cancers?

Image credit – National Institutes of Health

CANCER DIGEST – March 19, 2022 – While it might not be an effective COVID-19 treatment, a new study suggests that the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine might make a common chemotherapy treatment more effective for head and neck cancers.

Thrust into the headlines at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic as a potential treatment promoted by the former president of the US, hydroxychloroquine has been shown to breakdown tumor resistance to the chemotherapy drug cisplatin, long used to treat a variety of cancers, including head and neck cancers.

Tweaking cancer drug to target iron boosts effectiveness and reduces toxicity

A microscopic image of KRAS-driven lung cancer (purple) in a
mouse model. Image credit – National Cancer Institute

CANCER DIGEST – March 11, 2022 – By tweaking an already FDA-approved cancer drug, researchers at the University of California San Francisco have opened up new therapies for cancers with a specific mutation that are particularly difficult to treat. The study appears in the March 9, 2022 Journal of Experimental Medicine.

Implantable beads produce cancer-killing drug to eradicate tumors

Rice University bioengineers Amanda Nash (left) and Omid Veiseh with vials of
bead-like “drug factories.” Photo credit – Rice University Media

CANCER DIGEST – March 5, 2022 – Implantable 'mini drug factories' have been shown to eliminate tumors in animal models. However, because the materials and the drug used are already FDA approved, the Rice University researchers hope to be able to begin human clinical trials later this year.