Dr. Weber on Selecting Immunotherapy for Patients With Melanoma

Jeffery S. Weber, MD, PhD, deputy director of the Laura and Isaac Perlmutter Cancer Center, co-director of the Melanoma Program, and head of Experimental Therapeutics at NYU Langone Medical Center, discusses factors to consider when selecting an immunotherapy agent for a patient with melanoma.

Though opinions vary among experts in the field, many oncologists believe that BRAF-mutant patients with high disease burden should initially receive a BRAF/MEK inhibitor combination, Weber explains. Immunotherapy should be used as a second-line therapy, he adds.

However, Weber adds that for indolent BRAF-mutant patients, there are oncologists who will administer immunotherapy in the frontline setting. However, evidence suggest that such indolent patients may have durable responses with targeted agents. Additionally, for elderly patients, oncologists are cautious to adminster an immunotherapy combination of nivolumab (Opdivo) and ipilimumab (Yervoy) as it is a more toxic regimen.