Clin Cancer Res: A special new tool is expected to help fight melanoma

21, 2020 // -- In a recent study published in the international journal Clinical Cancer Research, scientists from the University of Idiscovin and others found a key blood marker for cancer that could help scientists choose the most effective melanoma treatment, and the results may help improve survival rates in melanoma patients.
researchers have found that patients with high levels of circulating tumour DNA, an important blood marker that indicates cancer, may also benefit from effective treatments against melanoma, and that the findings may also help clinicians develop new types of melanoma therapies.
researcher Gray says choosing the right drugs and therapies to treat melanoma is cumbersome and complex, and depends on a number of factors, including the characteristics of the tumor and how it spreads throughout the body.
Photo Source: Edith Cowan University Biomarkers may help clinicians better determine which patients can achieve better outcomes if treated with combination therapy;
this paper also helps clinicians develop individualized therapies based on specific disease characteristics and patients.
researchers have found that ctDNA biomarkers may not help predict the outcome of treatment for melanoma patients treated with immunotherapy as a second-line treatment, after previous studies have shown that they can help better predict survival rates in patients before first-line therapy.
Because ctDNA can be used to indicate a patient's response to a targeted first round of melanoma therapy, they have now found that it cannot predict the survival rate of patients after second-line treatment, which means clinicians may use other means to determine whether the treatment can successfully treat melanoma patients.
This study is based on scientists' investigations into cancer biomarkers in the blood, commonly known as liquid biopsies, which are critical to understanding how cancer spreads in the body;
researchers say we are now looking for new drugs and therapies to treat melanoma, but if we find evidence that a particular drug works on tumors that carry a certain characteristic, it may help them use current drugs for more targeted and precise treatments.
Researchers are now delving into the properties of melanoma, which are resistant to therapy, and explaining why second-line therapy is not effective in treating melanoma;
() Original source: Gabriela Marsavela, Jenny Lee, Leslie Calapre, et al. Moveding Tumor DNA Outcomes Outcomes from First-, but not Second-line Treatment and Identifies Melanoma Patients Who May Benefit From Configuration Immunotherapy, Clinical Cancer Research (2020). DOI:10.1158/1078-0432.CCR-20-2251