Interferon not beneficial for most stage III Melanoma

Final results for the Sunbelt Melanoma Trial, published online this month in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, show that thanks to current diagnostic techniques, most stage III melanoma patients do not benefit from treatment with interferon. The first of more than 3600 trial participants were enrolled in 1997. Patients with small amounts of melanoma detected in a single lymph node were either treated with high-dose interferon therapy or simply observed.
"We started the Sunbelt Melanoma Trial to determine whether interferon therapy was warranted in this relatively lower risk group of stage III patients," McMasters said. "What we found was that there was no evidence that interferon was necessary or helpful for this substantial group of melanoma patients. That saves many patients the toxicity and expense of interferon therapy, which is like having the flu, only worse, for a whole year. While the study did not quite meet its accrual goals and was underpowered to detect very small differences in survival, there was not even a trend for improvement in survival with interferon. Based on these findings, it would be hard to recommend interferon therapy for patients with minimal cancer in just one lymph node. Most patients have the smaller level of cancer detected in the lymph nodes.
While interferon is still one of the two FDA-approved drugs for adjuvant therapy for high-risk melanoma, McMasters believes options now in the pipeline and further research into the molecular behavior of cancer cells will reveal more advantageous treatments for those with limited lymph node metastases.
"Newer studies of melanoma adjuvant therapy using immune checkpoint agents, such as PD-1 inhibitors, show much promise,"

A University of Texas at Arlington electrical engineer has developed a novel cancer cell detection method that will improve early diagnosis through a tool that tracks cellular behavior in real time using nanotextured walls that mimic layers of body tissue.
Samir Iqbal, an associate professor in the Electrical Engineering Department, detailed his team's results in a recent Nature Scientific Reports paper called "Effects of Nanotexture on Electrical Profiling of Single Tumor Cell and Detection of Cancer from Blood in Microfluidic Channels."


Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2016-02-electrical-device-cancer-rapidly-cellular.html#jCp