Published in:
Open Access
01-05-2014 | Oral presentation
Combination therapy with ipilimumab and electrochemotherapy: preliminary efficacy results and correlation with immunological parameters
Authors:
Ester Simeone, Lucia Benedetto, Giusy Gentilcore, Marilena Capone, Corrado Caracò, Gianluca Di Monta, Ugo Marone, Marialuisa Di Cecilia, Antonio Maria Grimaldi, Stefano Mori, Nicola Mozzillo, Paolo A Ascierto
Published in:
Journal of Translational Medicine
|
Special Issue 1/2014
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Excerpt
Ipilimumab is the first agent approved for the treatment of advanced melanoma that showed a survival benefit in randomized phase 3 trials. Despite the survival benefit, due to its mechanism of action it is associated with a slow onset and low rate of responses and, in many cases, responses occur after other therapies, like chemotherapy, targeted therapy and radiotherapy. Electrochemotherapy (ECT) has been shown to be effective and well tolerated for local control of metastatic melanoma with superficial lesions. The current challenge is to improve ipilimumab efficacy by combination/sequence with other therapies. We performed a pilot study of combination with ipilimumab and ECT in order to verify the possible increase of response rate. Furthermore, due to the lack of predictive markers, we evaluated the possible predictive role of circulating T-regulatory cells (T-Reg) variations in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) of treated patients. …