Study Group: Skin Cancer Oncologists (US)(?)

Skin care encompasses cosmetic procedures.  But those cosmetic procedures should not take priority over the medical conditions - especially since dermatologists are uniquely qualified to treat them.  I didn't go to medical school, a residency in medicine, and a fellowship in dermatology to...

Oncophage is an autologous (or derived directly from a patient's own tumor cells) vaccine that may promote the generation of an effective anti-tumor immune response when re-injected into patients. Trials in melanoma and renal cell cancer failed to meet their primary endpoints and approval has not been...

The Data Safety Monitoring Board halted the Phase III randomized open label trial comparing the Pfizer anti-CTLA4 antibody, tremelimumab, to "standard" (and generally ineffective) chemotherapy for metastatic melanoma. The Board has reported that there is no statistical difference between the primary...

So, now CTLA4 blockade, touted as the next big thing in melanoma, runs into the same thing as a host of other agents with promising phase II activity: failure at the phase III level.  Pfizer's randomized phase III of tremelimumab versus the fool's gold standard dacarabzine/DTIC was...

This drug, which has just entered Phase I testing, is very interesting because it combines IL-12, which has shown both activity and significant toxicity, with a targeting antibody. Hopefully, this targeting antibody will minimize the toxicity of IL-12 on or in normal tissues.