Adjuvant interferon prolongs relapse-free survival in advanced melanoma

European researchers have reported that long-term adjuvant therapy with pegylated interferon-alpha2b (PEG-IFN; INTRON® A) improves relapse-free survival, compared with observation alone, in results presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting in Chicago this week.

In this Phase III study, patients with stage III melanoma received PEG-IFN for up to 5 years or were clinically observed during the study. Relapse-free survival (RFS) was significantly higher with PEG-IFN (34.8 months) versus clinical observation (25.5 months) over the 5 years of the study.

There was no significant difference between the study arms in either distant metastasis-free survival (DMFS) or overall survival (OS) in the entire population. However, patients with only microscopic nodal involvement (sentinel node-positive) seemed to have better outcomes, in terms of both RFS and DMFS.

Author’s conclusions: ‘Long term PEG-IFN therapy in stage III melanoma had a significant and sustained impact on RFS, but not on DMFS and OS. Patients with only microscopic nodal involvement (sentinel node positive) seemed to have greater benefit in terms of both RFS and DMFS. Similar better effects of adjuvant IFN therapy in pts with lower disease burden are observed in 2 consecutive EORTC trials (18952 and 18991) involving 2644 pts.’

Source: http://www.asco.org/portal/site/ASCO/menuitem.34d60f5624ba07fd506fe310ee37a01d/?vgnextoid=76f8201eb61a7010VgnVCM100000ed730ad1RCRD&vmview=abst_detail_view&confID=47&abstractID=32118