The role of immunotherapy in the treatment of skin melanoma: a contemporary perspective

Purpose of the study . To evaluate the role and possibilities of various types of immunotherapy in the treatment of skin melanoma, as well as the prospects for its use in clinical practice. Materials and methods . The literature was looked up in the PubMed database. Publication date limit was set from 2018 to 2023. The following keywords were used as search queries: "Melanoma", "Melanoma and immunotherapy", "Treatment of Metastatic Melanoma", "Immunological Factors". Full-text versions were selected. Articles that were based on the subjective opinion of the authors were excluded from the study. For each research found, the following parameters were recorded: treatment method, number of patients, follow-up period, time of relapse-free course, survival rate. No meta-analysis of the data was performed due to the high heterogeneity of the studies. Results . A sufficiently high efficiency of adjuvant therapy with inhibitors of immune response control points in the treatment of BRAF-negative patients has been noted. For this reason, the drug ipilimumab, which appeared among the first, demonstrated its effectiveness. The drug nivolumab gave, according to one of the studies, a 5‑year overall survival rate of 35 %. The use of pembrolizumab was associated with a 5‑year overall survival rate of 41 %. In the 2015 meta-analysis It has been demonstrated that the use of nivolumab, as well as pembrolizumab, provides the best overall survival, and therefore can be included in first-line therapy. The combination of these drugs makes it possible to achieve a good response to therapy in patients with BRAF-positive status (5‑year overall survival rate of 52 %). Conclusion. Melanoma immunotherapy with immune response checkpoint inhibitors is currently the most effective treatment method, especially in cases where it complements surgical resection of the tumor. The most commonly used drugs are nivolumab and ipilimumab, which work more effectively when combined. Thus, the 5‑year progression-free survival rate is 36 %, the overall survival rate is 52 %. Resistance to immunotherapy is an important problem of this type of treatment, the solution of which will help to improve the outcomes of control over the local cancer process and improve the response to therapy. It is possible to find a solution to this problem due to the fundamental study of the molecular biology of the tumor in terms of modeling tumor growth and tumor "escape" mechanisms.