New results from a clinical trial co-led by UCLA investigators demonstrate how treating desmoplastic melanoma, a rare and aggressive skin cancer, with immunotherapy before surgery can dramatically shrink or even eliminate tumors, sparing patients from more aggressive surgeries and preserving their quality of life.
The findings, published in Nature Cancer, show that 71% of patients who received the immunotherapy drug pembrolizumab, an anti-PD-1 immune checkpoint inhibitor that stimulates the body’s immune system to fight cancer, before surgery had no detectable cancer remaining at the time of surgery.
The multicenter clinical trial, known as SWOG S1512, was conducted by the SWOG Cancer Research Network and funded by the National Cancer Institute. It marks the first study to test neoadjuvant PD-1…