Opdivo

  •   George Lundberg, MD

    The ASCO Post reports on the U.S. Food And Drug Administration (FDA)’s recent approval of two new treatments for advanced, unresectable squamous cell carcinoma of the esophagus.

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  •   George Lundberg, MD

    As reported by Healio, immunotherapy followed by targeted therapy improved overall survival in a clinical trial with metastatic melanoma patients.

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  •   George Lundberg, MD

    The ASCO Post reports new results from a clinical trial in which the drug nivolumab (Opdivo) nearly doubled progression-free survival compared to a placebo drug for people with muscle-invasive bladder cancer.

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  •   George Lundberg, MD

    An academic research paper published in The New England Journal of Medicine reports new results from a phase III, randomized, double-blinded, controlled clinical trial. In the trial, people with esophageal or gastroesophageal junction cancer that had been surgically resected were treated with either a placebo drug or the drug nivolumab. All patients had previously received chemotherapy before resection and had residual disease after surgery. The findings suggest that nivolumab may be beneficial, as median disease-free survival in was doubled (22 versus 11 months) in the nivolumab treated group compared to the placebo group.

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  •   George Lundberg, MD

    Immuno-Oncology News reports on the European Commission’s approval of the drug nivolumab (Opdivo) for some patients with advanced esophageal cancer.

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  •   George Lundberg, MD

    Research paper from the Journal of Clinical Oncology curated by Editor in Chief George Lundberg, MD, who notes: 

    Eighty percent of ovarian cancers are first diagnosed after they have already spread. In the clinical trial discussed in this paper, a combination of two checkpoint inhibitor immunotherapy drugs showed only modest benefit in advanced ovarian cancer.

    Go to full paper published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

    If you’re wondering whether this story applies to your own cancer case or a loved one’s, we invite you to get support from Cancer Commons.

  •   George Lundberg, MD

    Research paper from The Lancet curated by Editor in Chief George Lundberg, MD, who notes: 

    In this clinical trial, nivolumab was somewhat superior to chemotherapy for advanced esophageal carcinoma.

    Go to full paper published in The Lancet.

    If you’re wondering whether this story applies to your own cancer case or a loved one’s, we invite you to get support from Cancer Commons.

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    Can You Improve Your Response to Certain Immunotherapy Drugs?

    Emma Shtivelman, PhD

    Cancer treatments that use a strategy called immune checkpoint blockade (ICB) have entered clinical practice in a big way, with six drugs now approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for a variety of cancers. These drugs release “brakes” on the immune system, boosting its ability to kill cancer cells. Specifically, they target the proteins PD-1 or CTLA-4, which are found on… Read more »

  •   Emma Shtivelman, PhD

    Excerpt from MedPage Today:

    “Combination neoadjuvant immune checkpoint blockade therapy yielded promising outcomes in high-risk resectable melanoma, although toxicity was an issue, according to a phase II trial.

    “The combination of ipilimumab (Yervoy) and nivolumab (Opdivo) led to improved progression-free survival (PFS), distant metastasis-free survival (DMFS), and overall survival (OS) versus neoadjuvant nivolumab monotherapy in 23 patients with high-risk resectable melanoma, reported Jennifer A. Wargo, MD, of MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, and colleagues in Nature Medicine.”

    Go to full article published by MedPage Today on Oct 11, 2018.

    If you’re wondering whether this story applies to your own cancer case or a loved one’s, we invite you to get support from Cancer Commons.

  •   Emma Shtivelman, PhD

    Excerpt from Medscape:

    “Combined immunotherapy with two checkpoint inhibitors — nivolumab (Opdivo, Bristol-Myers Squibb) and ipilimumab (Yervoy, Bristol-Myers Squibb) — has shown ‘clinically meaningful’ efficacy in patients with asymptomatic, untreated melanoma metastases to the brain, according to a report regarding new data from the CheckMate 204 open-label phase 2 study.

    ” ‘Although current practice is to start with surgery, stereotactic radiotherapy, or both followed by immunotherapy or targeted agents, our results support the initiation of immunotherapy to achieve prompt control of both extracranial and brain metastases,’ write the authors.”

    Go to full article published by Medscape on Aug 22, 2018.

    If you’re wondering whether this story applies to your own cancer case or a loved one’s, we invite you to get support from Cancer Commons.