Re-treating Melanoma After PD-1 Blockade Shows Good Response

This transcript has been edited for clarity.

Hello. This is Dr Jeffrey Weber. I'm a medical oncologist at the Laura and Isaac Perlmutter Cancer Center at New York University Langone Health in New York City.

I'd like to report on an interesting article in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Allison Betof Warner and colleagues, describing a single-institution experience, from the outstanding Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, of patients with metastatic melanoma who received single-agent programmed death-1 (PD-1) blockade. The article describes the outcome in those mostly nonprotocol patients and, importantly, also talks about what happens when a significant proportion of them progressed and went on to receive subsequent therapy.

A very important question for academicians and practicing oncologists is: What do you do if a patient has had single-agent PD-1 blockade and does well for a period of time but then progresses and requires second-line therapy? What is the best choice? The natural history of this disease after PD-1 blockade is a very important issue, and that is what this article addressed.

There were 396 patients in total; 69% of them were not on a trial, so this was a reasonable, real-world experience. Twenty-five percent had a complete response (CR), of which about 70% were subsequently confirmed on independent radiologic review.