Dr. Hamid on Patient Selection for Immunotherapy Regimens in Melanoma

Omid A. Hamid, MD, chief, Translational Research and Immunotherapy, director, Melanoma Therapeutics, The Angeles Clinic and Research Institute, discusses how to accurately select patients who are likely to have durable and long responses with single-agent immunotherapy versus combination treatment.

Specifically, Hamid explains, the question should be, "Who will respond best to single-agent immunotherapy or to one of the many combinations, whether they be in clinical trials or are approved by the FDA?" Steps to evaluate this will be with newer assays beyond PD-L1 staining, mutational load status, CD8-positive T-cells in the tumor biopsy specimen, and exhausted T-cell phenotypes.

These are all approaches that have been explored and presented, and will be reviewed in the near future.