Dr. Weber on the Updated Analysis of the CheckMate-238 Trial in Melanoma

Jeffrey S. Weber, MD, PhD, deputy director and co-director of the Melanoma Program, NYU Langone’s Perlmutter Cancer Center, 2016 Giant of Cancer Care in Melanoma, discusses the updated analysis of the phase III CheckMate-238 trial in patients with resected stage III/IV melanoma.

Initials results of the trial demonstrated an improvement in relapse-free survival (RFS) with nivolumab (Opdivo) versus ipilimumab (Yervoy) in patients with resected stage III/IV melanoma. The efficacy of nivolumab was maintained at 24 months of follow-up. At 36 months of follow-up, nivolumab showed a sustained benefit in RFS that compared favorably to what was seen with ipilimumab (HR, 0.68; P&thinsp;<0.0001), says Weber. In addition to RFS, updated distant metastasis-free survival data similarly demonstrated an improvement with nivolumab versus ipilimumab (HR, 0.78; P = .044).

At 3 years, the RFS rates were 58% in the nivolumab arm and 45% in the ipilimumab arm. Moreover, interferon-gamma gene expression signature, tumor mutational burden, and CD8+ T-cell infiltration were associated with an improvement in RFS for nivolumab and ipilimumab.

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