Immunotherapy of melanoma

Abstract

Immunotherapy for advanced melanoma has progressed dramatically in the last five years with the approval of immune checkpoint inhibitors targeting cytotoxic T lymphocyte-associated protein 4 (CTLA-4) and programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1). Inhibition of these targets can break cancer-immune tolerance and result in durable objective responses with significantly improved tolerability over cytokine-based immunotherapy. Ipilimumab is an inhibitor of CTLA-4 and the first-in-class immune checkpoint inhibitor to demonstrate an improvement in overall survival in melanoma. Pembrolizumab and nivolumab target PD-1 and have improved single agent activity and tolerability in comparison to ipilimumab...