M. Freeman-Keller et al., 2016.
To date, immunotherapy for cancer has generated significant response rates and prolonged survival, particularly in melanoma, where sustained clinical responses can be seen even after cessation of therapy. Current treatments rely on inhibiting critical immune checkpoints, but also carry the risk of immune-related adverse events (irAE), which have been well described in the literature. There is growing interest in balancing the potential for benefit and risk with immunotherapy, thereby identifying patients who would gain the most from treatment. Because depth of immune activation may correlate with the likelihood of immune-related toxicity, an association between irAEs and disease outcomes might also exist. In this article, we describe our single institutional experience of treating 148 patients with resected and unresectable metastatic melanoma with the anti–PD-1 antibody nivolumab, and describe the irAE toxicity profile (including onset, resolution, and need for supportive therapy) and the potential association of those irAEs with survival.
Freeman-Keller, M., Kim, Y., Cronin, H., Richards, A., Gibney, G., & Weber, J. S. (2016). Nivolumab in Resected and Unresectable Metastatic Melanoma: Characteristics of Immune-Related Adverse Events and Association with Outcomes. Clinical Cancer Research: An Official Journal of the American Association for Cancer Research, 22(4), 886–894.