New Response Criteria Proposed for Immunotherapies

linical investigators are testing the antitumor activity of several immunotherapies in a variety of malignancies. But new data from trials in melanoma patients suggest that the standard criteria used to define tumor response and progression may not adequately reflect patient responses to immunotherapeutic agents. In a worst-case scenario, researchers say, the disconnect between patient responses and the criteria used to evaluate them could cause active drugs to fail in clinical trials and the regulatory process. With these concerns in mind, a group of academic and industry researchers proposed a modification to the standard response criteria, which they presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology.