Dr. Hamid on the Effectiveness of Immunotherapy in AYA Patients With Melanoma

Omid Hamid, MD, director of Research and Immuno-Oncology at The Angeles Clinic, discusses the effectiveness of immunotherapy in adolescent and young adult (AYA) patients with melanoma.

Recently, there has been a lot of data presented and published on the decreased response rate that younger patients with melanoma have to immunotherapy with anti—PD-1/anti–PD-L1 therapy. In a retrospective evaluation of the targets that are co-expressed in these younger patients, investigators aimed to figure out optimal combinations to evaluate moving forward. The combination approach may be beneficial, as younger patients tend to have lower expression of multiple immune checkpoint molecules.

Hamid says that combinations are going to need to be chosen deliberately to get better response rates. Then, there will be an opportunity to provide better progression-free survival and overall survival for this population of younger patients. Hamid says that this may take a better understanding of how the tumor microenvironment differs between younger patients and adult patients.