Real world treatment practice in patients with advanced melanoma in the nivolumab era: five novel Italian case reports and a literature review

The approval of the anti-PD1 antibody nivolumab has provided a significant therapeutic opportunity in the landscape of metastatic melanoma. In pivotal clinical trials, nivolumab improved clinical outcomes with a great safety profile. However, in real-world practice, the majority of the population with metastatic melanoma does meet one or more eligibility criteria of pivotal trials, since they have an ECOG-PS ≥ 2 or active/untreated known brain metastases. Waiting for larger real-wold studies that are currently lacking, but would be crucial to confirm the efficacy of nivolumab in challenging patients and to detect rare adverse events that could not be noticed in pivotal trials, this review collects both literature and unpublished case reports on nivolumab treatment in metastatic melanoma