Bris­tol-My­ers Squibb boasts im­pres­sive 5-year melanoma OS da­ta on Op­di­vo/Yer­voy com­bo, though it still can't pin­point who should take it

BARCELONA — Two years ago Bris­tol-My­ers Squibb took the stage at AACR to show­case some im­pres­sive 5-year sur­vival rates with Op­di­vo, un­der­scor­ing the dura­bil­i­ty of the PD-1 in­hibitor and flag­ging tu­mor mu­ta­tion bur­den as a po­ten­tial bio­mark­er to pre­dict re­sponse. At ES­MO Con­gress 2019, the spot­light is on melanoma — but the search for a pre­dic­tive sig­nal seems ever elu­sive.

Now the longest Phase III fol­low-up in­volv­ing a check­point com­bo, the 5-year OS dat­a­cut of Check­mate-067 ex­tends an im­pres­sive streak on dis­play the year be­fore. Among 945 pa­tients with stage III and IV melanoma split in­to three equal groups, the rates are 52% for Op­di­vo plus Yer­voy, 44% for Op­di­vo, and 26% for Yer­voy (For ref­er­ence, at 4 years the com­bo scored 53%, Op­di­vo alone had 46%, while Yer­voy monother­a­py reg­is­tered 30%).

To un­der­stand how re­mark­able this is, one must re­vis­it the past, said study au­thor James Larkin in an ES­MO state­ment, when metasta­t­ic melanoma was con­sid­ered un­treat­able.

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