MIAMI – Over the past decade, immunotherapy treatments have increased the survival rate of advanced melanoma tenfold, from 5% to over 50%.
Being a fair skinned former sun lover, Orsi Kore has had several benign growths on her skin removed over the years but in 2019 she noticed a mole that started behaving differently.
“This one I had previously, I always had it but then it started changing color and it started bleeding and that’s when I said this is not good I have to go to the dermatologist,” Kore said.
Soon she was in a battle for her life.
“Everything started to spread everywhere, it started to spread to the liver and the digestive system and everywhere else,” Kore said.
When all else failed, Dr. Jose Lutzky, a triple board-certified hematologist and oncologist with Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, put Kore on the newest FDA approved therapy for patients with metastatic or unresectable melanoma.
“This is actually two drugs that are combined in the same bag, they are marketed combined, and they’re given in the vein for 30 minutes once every four weeks,” Lutzky said.
He is impressed with the response in the most aggressive forms of the disease.
“I think this new combination now is replacing, in most cases of patients with advanced melanoma, the more aggressive therapy that had more side effects,” he said.
Experts are now trying to determine how long patients should stay on the treatment.
“There’s some data that suggests if everything goes away that maybe treatment for one year is enough, some people say two years, and there are even some people who say you should never stop the treatment, so I think it really depends on patients we’re doing studies actually to try to figure that out,” Lutzky said.
After some ups and downs during therapy, Kore recently got word that her aggressive cancer is now under control.
“So it’s been an amazing year,” she said.
For patients with advanced disease who do qualify for surgical removal, a large randomized trial showed a benefit from giving patients the therapy before, as well as after, surgery.