New hope for melanoma, colorectal cancer treatment

New hope for the treatment of melanoma and colorectal cancer was presented at a major cancer research conference in Chicago today.
"The studies presented today illustrate the progress we are making against advanced cancers that are resistant to traditional therapies," said Gregory Masters, a medical oncologist at the Helen F. Graham Cancer Centre in Delaware.
"New targeted and immunotherapy drugs are emerging as viable strategies for halting the progression of these difficult diseases."
Three major studies presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology annual conference showed promising results for treating melanoma.
Melanoma, which is expected to cause nearly 9,500 deaths in the United States this year, is typically found in the skin.

It becomes one of the hardest cancers to treat when it affects the eye.

Researchers believe they have found the first drug able to tackle advanced melanoma of the eye.
An early phase II clinical study of 98 patients found AstraZeneca's drug selumetinib led tumours to shrink for half the patients who used it.
It also more than doubled the amount of time -- to 15.9 weeks -- it took for the disease to worsen when compared with patients who received a drug developed to fight melanoma of the skin. The median survival rate rose to 10.8 months from 9.4 months.

Eight previous clinical studies had shown tumour shrinkage in only two of the 157 patients tested.
"While we are hopeful an agent like selumetinib will be commercially available in the near future, in the meantime we must continue to steer patients towards clinical trials," said lead author Richard Carvajal, a medical oncologist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Centre in New York.
A second study found that Bristol-Myers Squibb's drug nivolumab -- which targets a receptor on the surface of T-cells to boost the body's immune response to cancer -- helped late-stage melanoma patients who did not respond to traditional therapy.
The expanded phase I study of 107 patients found that 30 percent experienced tumour shrinkage, compared with historical response rates of five to 10 percent, while median survival rates exceeded those of recently approved melanoma drugs.

"I think nivolumab is a real breakthrough drug for patients with metastatic melanoma, and probably for other diseases, too," said lead author Mario Sznol, a professor of medical oncology at the Yale Cancer Centre in Connecticut.