[Immunotherapies and melanoma]

Metastatic melanoma treatment has been radically modified over the last four years with the emergence of new and effective therapeutic strategies targeted anti-BRAF therapies as well as immunotherapy. Following this latter immunotherapy strategy, anti-CTLA4 antibody ipilimumab demonstrated a benefit in terms of overall survival in patients with metastatic melanoma and is now challenged by other checkpoint inhibitors, antibodies directed against PD-1 and PD-L1 that have extremely promising benefit/risk ratio. Adverse events as well as evaluation criteria are different from the ones associated with classical chemotherapy or targeted therapies. The challenge for the next years will be to optimize these new strategies, by possibly using these new drugs sequentially or in combination for a higher clinical benefit for our patients.