Over 43,000 specialists attended the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) in Chicago June 1 - 5 2007. I will post some of the interesting reports on this site. There were two posters (one using the Pfizer antibody and one using the Bristol-Myers Squibb antibody) presenting results of therapy of metastatic melanoma with an anti-CTLA-4 monoclonal antibody.

The results are interesting in that both studies responses in many patients occurred late - often after 3 or months of therapy and responses were remarkably durable. These late and durable responses are very different from those that occur with cytotoxic chemotherapy such as with DTIC or temozolomide, in which responses occur much sooner, if they occur at all. These monoclonal antibodies act by stimulating the patient's own immune responses to kill the tumor rather than acting directly on the tumor as chemotherapy does. Click for report (PDF).