good results from intralesional therapy + pembro

Am glad for you and your good news. I took pembro + TVEC for one year, after pembro alone failed to achieve any reduction. After growing while on treatment (it reached about 3.5cm on ultrasound, less than this on the MRI) after about six weeks the tumour stopped growing and started to shrink. I could see the (nervewrackingly slow) progress every two weeks on ultrasound. After one year it shrank to 1.5cm but with width of only 0.2cm so was very hard to detect. Five months ago, I was NED; then two months ago it came back but at 0.2cm and it could be scar tissue.

I asked my oncologist about the results. I was the first in my hospital to try this treatment and wondered if it was a miracle cure, it seemed so good. They tried it on others with a (much?) greater tumour burden and for them it was not successful.

I think intralesional combined with pembro is a great approach. I am a little scared because I never quite make it to NED and life hangs on a thread and I dont want to jinx anything, but I think its a great approach and would encourage others to try it, especially if light tumour burden. my doctors were surprised insurance approved this combo (even though it makes a lot of sense i dont think its standard of care) and when insurance did approve they had to kind of scramble to deliver it (i had to change hospital and doctor). texmelanomex has done will with rose bengal plus pembro, so it would be good to get more data points to see how good this is. in my case it was a big deal because i had been on pembro on and off for more than one year with stable disease / slight progression, so adding tvec made a big difference. still I dont want to jinx it.

good luck Mark