Nine‐year data show sustained benefit of nivolumab in patients with high‐risk resected melanoma
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: CANCERO ne year of nivolumab consistently improved recurrence-free survival (RFS) in patients with resected stage IIIB-C or IV melanoma according to the final 9-year data from CheckMate 238. 1 The data were presented by Paolo A. Ascierto, MD, of the Istituto Nazionale Tumori, IRCCS Fondazione G. Pascale, in Naples, Italy, and his colleagues at the 2025 European Society for Medical Oncology Congress and were published simultaneously in The New England Journal of Medicine. 1 CheckMate 238 is a phase 3 trial that enrolled patients with high-risk resected melanoma and randomly assigned them to intravenous nivolumab or ipilimumab for up to 1 year.The primary analysis of the trial showed that nivolumab was superior to ipilimumab for RFS (1-year RFS, 70.5% vs. 60.8%;hazard ratio [HR], 0.65; 97.56% CI, 0.51-0.83;p < .001),with fewer grade 3 or 4 treatment-related adverse events. 2 "This benefit was sustained at multiple subsequent analyses and confirmed, along with KEYNOTE-054, the benefit of adjuvant anti-PD-1 in high-risk resected melanoma," says Diwakar Davar, MD, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center in Pennsylvania.3 The updated analysis, with a follow-up of almost 9 years, showed that the initial benefits seen with nivolumab were sustained.Median RFS was 61.1 months with nivolumab versus 24.2 months with ipilimumab (HR, 0.76; 95% CI, 0.63-0.90).The 9-year RFS rate was 44% with nivolumab and 37% with ipilimumab.The median duration of distant metastasis-free survival in patients with stage III disease was more than 9 years with nivolumab versus 83.8 months with ipilimumab.
Source: Cancer
DOI: 10.1002/cncr.70234
Author: Leah Lawrence
Language: English
Subfield: Oncology
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W7127650471