In a nutshell
The authors evaluated the safety and effectiveness of nab-paclitaxel (Abraxene), a chemotherapy, in patients with advanced melanoma. The authors found that nab-paclitaxel was safe, effective, and provided favorable outcomes.
Some background
In advanced melanoma, cancer spreads from the skin to other parts of the body. This is called metastasis. Treatment by chemotherapy still remains one of the most effective options at this stage of the disease. Dacarbazine is the standard-of-care chemotherapy for metastatic melanoma. Other chemotherapy drugs, alone, or in combination, have failed to demonstrate similar effectiveness as dacarbazine. Nab-paclitaxel, a chemically modified form of paclitaxel chemotherapy, has shown promising outcomes among metastatic melanoma patients in early-phase clinical trials.
Further study is needed to compare the utility of nab-paclitaxel to the current standard-of-care; dacarbazine.
Methods & findings
529 patients with metastatic melanoma were included in this study. None of the patients had previously received chemotherapy. 264 patients were randomly assigned to receive nab-paclitaxel, and 265 patients were assigned to receive dacarbazine.
Average progression-free survival (the time from treatment and until disease progressed) was 4.8 months for patients assigned to nab-paclitaxel, compared to 2.5 months for patients receiving dacarbazine. Melanoma related mortality risk was reduced by 11% among patients receiving nab-paclitaxel.
Overall, 15% of patients receiving nab-paclitaxel were found to have good response to treatment, as compared to 11% of patients receiving dacarbazine. 39% of patients receiving nab-paclitaxel showed some response to treatment, compared to 27% among those receiving dacarbazine.
The most common serious side effects reported were chemotherapy-related nerve damage (25% of those receiving nab-paclitaxel), and a low white blood cell count (20% of those receiving nab-paclitaxel).
The bottom line
The authors concluded that nab-paclitaxel is more effective in the treatment of metastatic melanoma than the current standard-of-care chemotherapy dacarbazine.
The fine print
The results of this study should be confirmed in larger long-term studies, including an analysis of overall mortality and quality-of-life.
Published By :
Annals of oncology
Date :
Sep 26, 2015
