For the first time, a drug has a real positive impact on patients with metastatic uveal melanoma, a disease often qualified as untreatable.
The good news came from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, whose research results were presented at the 49th annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology. Researchers found that progression-free survival in patients treated with selumetinib was nearly 16 weeks, and half of these patients experienced tumour shrinkage, with 15% achieving major shrinkage.
In comparison, patients treated with temozolomide, the standard chemotherapy, had seven weeks of progression-free survival and no tumour shrinkage. Selumetinib also lengthened overall survival to 10.8 months versus 9.4 months with temozolomide.
This is the first study to show that a systemic therapy provides significant clinical benefit in a randomized fashion to advanced uveal melanoma patients, said lead author Richard D. Carvajal.
