Biochemo Study

One of the doctors passed on to me the following abstract when I asked him for a larger study of the success rate of biochemo in fighting melanoma.

The abstract comes from the 2005 Annual Meeting of the American Society of Cancer Oncology (ASCO). The good news is that there are certain factors that can increase the chances of success in surviving melanoma long term. And, I have all of the predictive factors listed in the conclusion, which means I have a leg up should I need to proceed with biochemo in 2008. No guarantee, of course, but I am happy to start off with some advantage!

Please note, for those heavily into statistics, that this analysis was determined to not be a 100% randomized survey, meaning that statistical analysis alone should not be applied. But, this is the best info I have to date.

Prognostic Factors Determining Long Term Survival of Patients with Unresectable Stage III and Stage IV Metastatic Melanoma (MM) Treated with Combination therapy or IL-2 based Biochemotherapy (BCC).

Background:

The impact of systemic therapy on long-term (l-t) survival (S) of pts with MM remains uncertain. The objective of this study was to evaluate the S of pts treated with regimens including cisplatin (C), Vinblastine (V), DTIC (D), Taxol (T), Tamoxifen (Tam), interferon Alfa (IFN) and interleukin-2 (IL-2). We also wanted to identify the prognostic factors that predicted l-t S.

Methods:

The databases of 616 pts with MM treated on 8 Phase II/III clinical trials conducted between 1987 and 2001 were reviewed. They included MM of Skin (498 cases), unknown primary (81) mucosal (21) and choroidal MM (16 cases).

Results:

The characteristics of the pts who received IL-2 based biochemotherapy (BCC) and non-BCC regimens were compared. The 2 groups were similar in terms of median age, gender, sites of primary, serum LDH, and number of Stage M1C cases.

Pt characteristics favored (p <>

The 5-year and 10-year overall S rates of BCC and non-BCC, not corrected for non-cancer related deaths, were 14.51 % and 7.95 % (p= 0.020) and 11.94 % and 4.47 % (p= 0.002) respectively.

In the non-BCC group, the S of 264 pts treated with 3-drug regimens CVD or CTD was not statistically significantly different than that of the 108 pts who received CVD+IFN±Tam.

The response rate and median S of the BCC group were 49.2% and 12.7 months respectively compared with 33.5% and 9.6 months for the non-BCC group.

Multivariate analysis revealed that treatment with biochemotherapy (p = 0.001), normal serum albumin level (p < ps =" 0" p =" 0.03)," p =" 0.02)">

Conclusions:

IL-2 based BCC is associated with superior l-t S than regimens not containing IL-2. Treatment with BCC, response to treatment, normal serum albumin level, normal LDH, PS = 0 and number of <>Enough with all this heavy reading for today. My TV is missing me.