Abstract
European leaders in treatment of malignant melanoma met in Frankfurt, on 19th May, 2011, including Alexander Eggermont, Axel Hauschild or Dirk Schadendorf and were speaking optimistically about new possibilities of treatment of metastatic malignant melanoma. There are new agents prolonging overal survival in malignant melanoma, after almost 20 years - vemurafenib and ipilimumab.
Vemurafenib is inhibitor of Mutation Braf V600E that has rapid therapeutic response. Ipilimumab is an antibody enhancing cytotoxic immune response by inhibiting its regulators.
Big trials concerning high-dose interpheron (HDI) in adjuvant treatment of malignant melanoma were spoken, concluding its consistent and reproducible results making this regimen the only one recommended in adjuvant setting. There are some trials with HDI still on-going (e.g.
ISRCTN75125874) with highly expected results. Alexander Eggermont introduced basis of his work on staging of sentinel node (SN) that would be essential for ultrasound assessing of SN (Rotterdam-Dewar-Starz criteria) and spoke about prognostic and predictive factors of HDI - ulceration of primary lesion or total tumour burden in SN or affected node.