BMY Bristol Myers Squibb Co

More than one-third of advanced melanoma patients treated in a study of Bristol-Myers Squibb Co.'s Opdivo have survived at least five years, researchers said, providing fresh evidence of the durable benefit cancer immunotherapy agents have for some patients.

The study followed 107 patients who were enrolled in an early trial of the drug, which was approved for melanoma by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2014. Thirty-four percent of the participants, all of whom had failed on other drugs, were still alive five years after treatment.

"This is a new benchmark for melanoma," said F. Stephen Hodi, director of the Melanoma Center at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, and an investigator at Harvard Medical School's Ludwig Center.

Dr. Hodi presented the findings at the annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research in New Orleans. The AACR said a National Cancer Institute database shows that the five-year survival rate for patients diagnosed with advanced melanoma between 2005 and 2011 was 16.6%.

Opdivo is one of three so-called checkpoint inhibitors currently on the market. Blocking the checkpoints releases molecular brakes, thus allowing immune system cells called T cells to attack cancer. Opdivo, and a rival called Keytruda from Merck & Co. target a brake called PD-1. (Both are approved for melanoma and for lung cancer.)

The first checkpoint inhibitor to reach the market was Yervoy, also from Bristol-Myers. It targets a brake known as CTLA-4 and in a previous analysis was shown to result in long-term survival in about 22% of melanoma patients.

The Yervoy results, and now the new findings for Opdivo, are especially significant, oncologists said, because they suggest, in each case, patients who survive a certain length of time—three years for Yervoy and about four years for Opdivo—are highly unlikely to relapse. That is essentially an unheard-of result in advanced cancer. The treatments appear to have enabled their immune systems to eradicate or take control of their tumors.

"People who have good responses really seem to be protected against their disease returning in many cases," said Louis M. Weiner, director of the Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center, Washington, D.C., who wasn't involved in the studies. "This is a mark of distinction in immunotherapy."

Still, two-thirds of melanoma patients aren't as lucky. But the success that has been achieved has sparked a wave of interest in cancer immunotherapy treatments among drug companies. Hundreds of clinical trials involving such agents, either alone or in combination with other drugs, are under way. The aim is to try to extend survival in more patients and find effective regimens against more types of cancer.

The new study is the first to look at long-term survival for an anti-PD-1 agent. Common side effects included a rash, a cough, and in serious cases, immune system attacks on healthy organs such as a the lung and the colon.

Corrections & Amplifications: F. Stephen Hodi is an investigator at Harvard Medical School's Ludwig Center. An earlier version of this article misspelled the name as Ludvig. (April 17, 2016).

Write to Ron Winslow at ron.winslow@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

April 17, 2016 20:35 ET (00:35 GMT)

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