WCCS/EADO 2016 | Novel triple combination therapies for melanoma

Jeffrey Weber, MD, PhD of the NYU Langone Medical Center, New York, NY discusses combination therapy options for melanoma at the 2016 World Congress on Cancers of the Skin (WCCS) and the Congress of the European Association of Dermato-Oncology (EADO) in Vienna, Austria. Prof. Weber begins by describing an ongoing debate on the development of new therapies, the question is should the basis for comparison be the combination of ipilimumab and nivolumab or ipilimumab and pembrolizumab or a single therapy PD-1 blockade. He adds that based on recent data in lung cancer using nivolumab and ipilimumab at a lower dose and administered less frequently, it suggests thatble that in the future, triple therapy combinations could be used with ipilimumab and nivolumab as a backbone to which another drug can be added. Prof. Weber gives details of an upcoming metastatic melanoma trial at NYU Langone Medical Center which will use ipilimumab, nivolumab and a histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitor. This may be one of the first triple combination phase I trials with ipilimumab and nivolumab as the backbone but Prof. Weber believes there will be more to follow.