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Response to Immunotherapy for Melanoma Tied to Autoimmunity Reprinted from the NCI Cancer Bulletin, vol. 3/no. 8, Feb. 21, 2006 (see the current issue).
Patients treated for melanoma skin cancer with adjuvant interferon alfa-2b who developed clinical signs of autoimmunity were significantly more likely to respond to the treatment than patients who did not, a
clinical trial has found. Autoimmunity occurs when the immune system begins to attack the body's own tissues.
Dr. Helen Gogas of the University of Athens Medical School, and colleagues enrolled 200 patients in a substudy of an ongoing trial. They prospectively evaluated the presence of autoantibodies and clinical manifestations of autoimmune disorders in melanoma patients who received adjuvant therapy with high-dose interferon alfa-2b.
The development of autoimmunity was associated with an approximate reduction by a factor of 50 in the risk of recurrence of melanoma. The benefit of interferon alfa-2b was primarily restricted to patients who showed signs of autoimmunity, the researchers report in the February 16, 2006, New England Journal of Medicine (see the journal abstract).
Efforts to identify biological markers for predicting which patients might respond have generally not been successful.
Although the new findings do not provide biological markers for patients who may have "immune-sensitive tumors," the results suggest a mechanistic connection between autoimmunity and the benefit from interferon alfa-2b in melanoma patients, says an accompanying editorial.
The study provides "the strongest data to date connecting the development of autoimmunity with a favorable antitumor effect of immunotherapy," write Drs. Henry Koon and Michael Atkins of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.
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