Melanoma / Current Clinical Oncology (PDF)

Substantial progress in the effective prevention and treatment of primary and recurrent melanomas is now being regularly achieved using therapeutic proteins and cells. In Melanoma: Biologically Targeted Therapeutics, Ernest C. Borden, MD, has assembled a multidisciplinary team of established and emerging leaders to detail the clinical problems and factors influencing the therapeutic deployment of these biologicals. Throughout, the focus is on providing the rationale and background by which the many promising biologically targeted therapies are translated via clinical trials into effective new therapies. Among the interventional agents treated are cytokines, monoclonal antibodies, targeted inhibitors, cellular therapies, and angiogenesis inhibitors. Special attention is given to adjuvant therapies for melanoma in patients staged as being at high risk for recurrence. These therapies include interferons, vaccines aimed at stimulating T cell response, and therapies targeted at abnormal melanoma cell proliferative signaling and angiogenesis inhibitors. Among the cutting-edge therapies discussed are novel cytokines that influence dendritic NK and T cell function, an allogenic cellular extract vaccine, and new targets (NF-kB and IL-8) for antiangiogenesis therapies.

State-of-the-art and forward looking, Melanoma: Biologically Targeted Therapeutics critically evaluates the biological, cellular, and targeted therapies that are already reducing mortality from primary melanomas, and are expected increasingly to continue so for the foreseeable future.