New Therapies in Melanoma: Current Trends, Evolving Paradigms, and Future Perspectives.

ABSTRACT

Melanoma is an aggressive skin cancer with increasing incidence and mortality worldwide. For many years the therapeutic strategies were limited to surgery, radiotherapy, and chemotherapy. Recent advances in immunology and cancer biology have led to the discovery and development of novel therapeutics, such as immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) and targeted therapies, which have revolutionized the clinical care of patients with metastatic melanoma. Despite recent successes with ICIs, many melanoma patients do not experience long-term benefits from ICI therapies, highlighting the need for alternative treatments with novel targets such as lymphocyte-activated gene 3 (LAG-3). In this review, we explore new therapeutic agents and novel combinations that are being tested in early-phase clinical trials. We discuss newer promising tools such as nanotechnology to develop nanosystems that act as drug carriers and/or light absorbents to potentially improve therapy outcomes. Finally, we also highlight challenges such as management after resistance and intervention with novel immunotherapies and the lack of predictive biomarkers to stratify patients to targeted treatments after primary treatment failure.