Immunotherapy and melanoma.
JUNE IS CANCER SURVIVOR MONTH, and I want to share with you some good news. The landmark CheckMate 067 clinical trial results are stunning: The majority of patients with advanced-stage melanoma treated with immunotherapy drugs survive more than five years.
Today we look at how immunotherapy is changing the face of cancer, from melanoma to kidney cancer, from rectal cancer to breast cancer.
We’ll explore how these innovative drugs work and how combining two immunotherapy drugs packs a big punch for those with melanoma that has spread (metastasized) to distant organs.
Immunotherapy and melanoma basics
Here are the top ten countries for melanoma incidence worldwide (by age-standardized rates per 100,000):
- Australia 37/100,000
- New Zealand 32/100,000
- Denmark 30/100,000
- The Netherlands 27/100,000
- Norway 26/100,000
- Sweden 23/100,000
- Switzerland 22/100,000
- Germany 21/100,000
- Slovenia 20/100,000
- Finland 19.5/100,000
To put these numbers in perspective, the average worldwide is 3.4/per 100,000. While melanoma represents a very small proportion of skin cancers, it is the most potentially life-threatening.
Symptoms may include a large brown spot with darker speckles; a mole that changes in color, size, or feel, or that bleeds; a small lesion with an irregular border, and sections that appear red, white, blue, or bluish-black; and dark lesions on your palms, soles, fingertips or toes, or on mucous membranes lining your nose, mouth, vagina or anus.
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