Melanoma Skin Cancer Treatment Improves with New Drug Ipilimumab

The survival time of patients battling melanoma, a deadly form of skin cancer, improved by 68 percent in a recent study involving ipilimumab, a new drug designed to fight infection. 

According to Timothy Turnham, Executive Director of the Melanoma Research Foundation, the last time a drug was approved in the treatment of melanoma was 12 years ago, and "finding another drug that is going to have an impact, and even a bigger impact than what's out there now, is a major improvement for patients."

Results from the study were published online in the New England Journal of Medicine and presented June 5, 2010, at the American Society of Clinical Oncology's annual meeting.  

The study involved 676 patients who had been previously treated for stage 3 or 4 melanoma. Patients were examined at 125 centers located around the world and were provided ipilimumab alone, ipilimumab plus gp100 peptide vaccine, or gp100 alone.

A 10-month survival time was noted in patients taking ipilimumab alone or ipilimumab plus gp100 peptide vaccine, a 68 percent increase over patients taking gp100 alone who experienced a survival rate of 6.4 months.

According to Dr. Steven O'Day, lead author of the study, results from the study are particularly important because melanoma "is a disease where the average survival is six to nine months, so an increase on average by an additional four months is a very large difference in this population."

Melanoma is the most serious form of skin cancer, resulting in the most deaths due to skin disease.

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