CHICAGO (Reuters) – Melanoma patients treated with two Bristol-Myers Squibb drugs fared much better than those who received either of the medications individually, a new advance for treatments that harness the body's immune system to fight cancer.
CHICAGO (Reuters) – Melanoma patients treated with two Bristol-Myers Squibb drugs fared much better than those who received either of the medications individually, a new advance for treatments that harness the body's immune system to fight cancer.
Bristol released preliminary data from the early-stage trial on Wednesday, with more detailed results expected to highlight the American Society of Clinical Oncology's annual meeting in Chicago that starts at the end of the month.
Patients in the study received Bristol's immunotherapy Yervoy, which is already on the market, and an experimental treatment called Nivolumab that attacks an immune-system-inhibiting protein called PD-1. The combined treatment shrank tumors in a majority of patients.
"We have never seen this with immunotherapy before," said Dr Jedd Wolchok of New York's Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. "The vast majority of patients have a decrease in tumor burden. In melanoma, we're used to seeing the opposite," he said of the notoriously difficult-to-treat form of skin cancer….
http://news.yahoo.com/bristol-melanoma-drug-combo-marks-advance-immunotherapy-222417114.html
.
