Dr. Weber Discusses Updated Data for CheckMate-238

Jeffrey S. Weber, MD, PhD, deputy director and co-director of the Melanoma Program, NYU Langone’s Perlmutter Cancer Center, 2016 Giant of Cancer Care^® in Melanoma, discusses updated data for the Checkmate-238 trial.

This phase III study tests adjuvant therapy with nivolumab (Opdivo) versus ipilimumab (Yervoy) for patients with complete resection of stage III/IV melanoma. Initial results showed clear benefit under the nivolumab arm compared with ipilimumab, with significantly less toxicity. Six additional months of follow-up indicate that nivolumab improves recurrence-free survival (RFS), which was the trial’s primary endpoint. The proportion of patients under nivolumab arms who had stop therapy from adverse events was 8% compared with greater than 30% of those who were on the ipilimumab arms.

After 24 total months of follow-up, RFS was 63% for patients treated with nivolumab versus 50% for ipilimumab. Weber adds that metastases-free survival also showed a clear advantage for nivolumab.