Dr. Wilson on Long-term Data With Dabrafenib Plus Trametinib in Melanoma

Melissa A. Wilson, MD, PhD, an assistant professor of medicine at Perlmutter Cancer Center at NYU Langone Medical Center, discusses the long-term data with the combination of dabrafenib (Tafinlar) and trametinib (Mekinist) in patients with BRAF-mutant melanoma.

These 5-year overall survival data demonstrate that patients are staying on these treatments much longer than we initially anticipated, Wilson explains. Since the median progression-free survival was 11.4 months, to have 5-year data is important to show that there are patients who are still on these targeted therapies. Investigators' concerns were that patients would develop resistance, so it is showing that a select population still has continued benefit using these.

Brain metastases remains to be an unmet need still in the field of melanoma, as clinicians are seeing a number of patients actually recur with brain metastases.