Mechanism and Clinical Application of Pembrolizumab in Treatment of Advanced Melanoma

Traditional treatment methods have poor prognosis for patients with advanced melanoma. However, immunotherapy can significantly improve the prognosis of patients. Among them, immune checkpoint inhibitors, as one of the commonly used clinical treatment methods, have made considerable progress in recent clinical treatments. Currently, most studies focus on the efficacy of pembrolizumab alone or in combination with other immune checkpoint inhibitors, but there is a lack of comparison of the efficacy of pembrolizumab alone with other treatment regimens. This article provides a comprehensive literature review of the PD-1 inhibitor pembrolizumab, aiming to summarize and analyze the mechanism and clinical application of pembrolizumab in the treatment of melanoma and clarify its application advantages. This study uses the literature review method to integrate data and mechanisms and reaches the following results: In terms of mechanism, CTLA-4 may cause an excessive immune response, but its precise regulation of tumor-specific T cells is relatively weak; the effect of PD-1 on the immune response mainly occurs in the effector phase of targeted immune responses, directly inhibiting the killing activity of T cells. In terms of biomarkers, PD-1 can better predict disease efficacy compared to CTLA-4. In clinical data, pembrolizumab can achieve long-term disease control, reduce the risk of treatment interruption, and has fewer side effects. Based on the analysis of the results, pembrolizumab has changed the prognosis of advanced melanoma, significantly improving the survival rate of patients and making advanced melanoma no longer an incurable disease.