New combination treatments for melanoma halve the risk of the disease progressing, researchers have told a European conference.
Researchers found one new treatment improved progression-free survival for 50% of patients by at least three months.
The Australian study involved patients with advanced or metastatic melanoma of the BRAF-mutation positive kind.
The findings were reported to the conference of the European Society for Medical Oncology in Madrid, Spain, yesterday.
They reported a complete response in 10% of patients treated with combination therapy compared with 4% of those treated with the drug vemurafenib.
The combination therapy involves adding the drug cobimetinib.
Some 495 patients took part in the study.
Researcher Dr Grant McArthur, of the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, Melbourne, Australia, said: “Before the results of this study, we knew that cobimetinib plus vemurafenib could be safely delivered together with highly promising rates of tumour shrinkage; however until the performance of a scientifically rigorous randomised trial the potential magnitude of this benefit could not be measured.
“This study is very important as it shows that using drugs together to turn off two individual proteins (BRAF and MEK), that interact and bind to each other in the cell, gives much improved results for patients.
"This is a fundamental concept that could have far reaching consequences for how we treat many cancers."
* Similar findings were reported by French researchers for another new combination therapy.
Researchers compared dabrafenib plus trametinib against vemurafenib on its own in patients with BRAF V600E/K mutation-positive melanoma.
Some 704 patients took part in the study, reported to the conference.
This showed a 44% reduction in risk of disease progression from the combination treatment and an improvement of at least four months in progression-free survival for 50% of patients.
Researcher Dr Caroline Robert, head of Dermatology at the Institute Gustave Roussy, Paris, France, said: "These results further corroborate the early preclinical data that more complete blockade of the MAP kinase pathway delays the emergence of resistance, translating into longer survival for the patients.”
The society’s melanoma coordinator Dr Reinhard Dummer, from the University of Zurich Hospital, Switzerland, said combination treatments should now become standard for these patients.
He said: “While monotherapy with a BRAF inhibitor is currently considered as a standard of care for patients with BRAF mutated advanced melanoma, the data from these two trials, along with trial data presented earlier this year, provide convincing evidence that combination therapy with either dabrafenib and trametinib, or vemurafenib and cobimetinib will be the standard systemic therapy for this patient population.”
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