ASCO 2009: Advances in Melanoma Treatment, Part II

As I detailed in my last post, the huge ASCO medical conference a few weekends ago highlighted some good news about potential upcoming treatments for melanoma skin cancer. But wait, there's more!

• A small study suggested that taking vitamin D reduced the risk of relapse from melanoma, although this is still a controversial topic.
• A review of almost 11,000 melanoma patients showed that 3.7% later developed another melanoma lesion on their skin. The good news is that this so-called "second primary" melanoma did not decrease survival.
• Many sessions focused on prognosis research: trying to figure out what factors are important for predicting survival and thus choosing the best treatment. For example, patients with ulcerated tumors (tumors that have broken through the skin) were shown to be much more sensitive to treatment with interferon-alfa2b after surgery. Also, the behavior of a set of 82 genes was shown to predict whether or not a patient will respond to dacarbazine (a common chemotherapy drug). Other molecules were also shown to be potentially important: miRNA, CTAg, Ki67, ERCC1, ERCC4, MATP, and more. Hopefully in the future, these prognostic factors will enable doctors to "customize" treatment to the specific biology of individual patients.
• For those with stage III melanoma trying to decide whether or not to do a complete lymph node dissection, a long-term study suggested that the surgery doesn't improve the survival of patients with a small amount of melanoma (less than 0.1 millimeters) in their sentinel lymph node. This analysis won't settle the ongoing controversy about this topic, but it was a large study that will help your doctor weigh the pros and cons of the procedure.

As always, keep in mind that these presentations were made at a conference and so must be considered preliminary until they are published in a medical journal. Nevertheless, it was an exciting meeting that promises some real changes to the treatment of this devastating disease in the next few years -- finally!