A skin cancer cell-based therapy showed stronger results than the leading immunotherapy melanoma drug, ipilimumab, in a phase 3 trial conducted by the Netherlands Cancer Institute.
The research is the world's first phase 3 trial for melanoma T-cell therapies and the first to test a tumor-infiltrating lymphocyte therapy against an existing treatment, according to a Sept. 10 press release.
The therapy decreased metastases in nearly half of the study's participants while ipilimumab reduced it in 21 percent of people. The TIL treatment removed metastases in 20 percent of participants while the immunotherapy did the same for 7 percent.
"Ten years ago, melanoma had such a bad prognosis that I would be seeing an entirely new patient population every year — but now I've been seeing some patients for ten years," John Haanen, MD, PhD, an oncologist at the institute and the leader of the trial, said in a statement. "This is largely due to the discovery of immunotherapy, which has revolutionized treatment for melanoma. But we still see that about half of the people diagnosed with metastatic melanoma succumb within five years, so we're still not where we want to be — not at all."
With a lifetime risk of 2.6 percent, melanoma makes up about 1 percent of skin cancers but results in the most skin cancer deaths, according to the American Cancer Society.
"The TIL trial has shown that cell therapy using the patient's own immune cells is an extremely powerful immunotherapy for metastatic melanoma, and that this therapy still offers a high chance of improvement, even if prior immunotherapies have failed," Dr. Haanen said.