| The following article features coverage from the 2017 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting in Chicago, Illinois. Click here to read more of Cancer Therapy Advisor‘s conference coverage. |
Talimogene laherparepvec plus ipilimumab improves the overall response rate (ORR) over ipilimumab alone among patients with unresected, advanced melanoma, according to a study presented at the 2017 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) meeting in Chicago, Illinois.1
Talimogene laherparepvec, an engineered oncolytic virus, is designed to replicate within tumors and to stimulate anti-tumor activity through granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF) production.
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For this phase 2, randomized trial (ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT01740297), researchers evaluated whether combining talimogene laherparepvec with ipilimumab, a CTLA-4 inhibitor, would improve outcomes among patients with melanoma over ipilimumab alone.
Of 198 included patients, 98 were assigned to the experimental arm (talimogene laherparepvec plus ipilimumab) and 100 were assigned to the control arm (ipilimumab only). Characteristics were similar between the 2 groups.
ORR, the primary endpoint, was 38.8% in the experimental arm and 18% for the control, including 13 complete responses in the former and 7 in the latter.
At the time the study was presented, 89% and 83% of responders in the experimental and control arms, respectively, remained in response.
Twenty-eight percent of patients in the experimental arm had grade 3 or worse treatment-related adverse events (AEs); this was true of 18% of patients in the control arm.
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The authors concluded that the “study met the [primary] endpoint. ORR was significantly higher for [talimogene laherparepvec plus ipilimumab] vs [ipilimumab]; responses were not limited to injected lesions. Toxicity of [the] combination was tolerable with no unexpected AEs.”
Read more of Cancer Therapy Advisor‘s coverage of the 2017 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting by visiting the conference page.
Reference
- Chesney JA, Puzanov I, Ross MI, et al. Primary results from a randomized (1:1), open-label phase II study of talimogene laherparepvec (T) and ipilimumab (I) vs I alone in unresected stage IIIB- IV melanoma. J Clin Oncol. 2017;35(suppl; abstr 9509).
