The treatment of melanoma with m-AMSA. A Cancer and Leukemia Group B phase II study

The activity of m-AMSA was evaluated IN 39 patients with advanced malignant melanoma. Seventy-nine percent of the patients had some prior chemotherapy. The others had some combination of surgery, radiotherapy, and immunotherapy prior to this study. Patients were treated every 3 weeks starting with 60 or 120 mg/m2 of m-AMSA depending on the extent of prior treatment. Doses were escalated if nadir WBC counts were greater than 2500/microliter. Leukopenia was the dose-limiting toxicity with 7.5% of patients having nadir WBC counts less than 1000/microliter. Of the 39 patients evaluable for response, all had progressive disease. In this study, m-AMSA in myelosuppressive doses was not active in malignant melanoma.