Cellular Therapies Hold Promise in the Future of Melanoma Care

At the 2025 National Immune Cell Effector Therapy Conference, Muhammad Umair Mushtaq, MD, delivered a presentation on the current state of tumor-infiltrating lymphocyte therapy in metastatic melanoma. As part of that presentation, he highlighted the efficacy of lifileucel (Amtagvi).

In a phase 2 trial (NCT02360579) of lifileucel in patients with advanced melanoma who were previously treated with immune checkpoint inhibitors and BRAF/MEK inhibitors, the overall response rate was 36%, with 2 complete responses and 20 partial responses, in a total of 66 patients.

When prompted about ways to optimize the efficacy of cellular therapies in melanoma, Mushtaq, an associate professor of medicine in the Division of Hematologic Malignancies and Cellular Therapeutics of the Department of Medicine at the University of Kansas Medical Center, spoke about administering them to patients in the first line of therapy, where the disease burden is lower. He also expressed the potential in combination regimens, such as immunotherapy with T-cell engagers.

Transcript:

One-third of patients had a response [to lifileucel], and of the patients who had a response, half of them were alive at the 4-year follow-up. There is margin to improve on that, but it’s exciting. It’s a treatment for those patients who don’t have any other effective treatments available. One key point is that we will get to know more as these treatments are being delivered in the real world and will have more experience in the coming years. It’s important to refer these patients early on, and we are seeing that these patients see a center that can deliver cell therapies once they have progressed and there aren’t any effective bridging treatments available. Sending these patients early to explore these treatments and then having clinical trials looking at these treatments in earlier lines of treatment would be the way forward.

The next step in melanoma and other cancer types, such as lung cancer, would be making these treatments part of the first line to capture more patients who would be able to get these treatments and not become sick with disease progression. Giving these [therapies] earlier, when the disease burden is low and…the disease evolution is also low, may be more effective in earlier stages rather than later lines of treatment. Other [steps] would be [exploring] combinations, like combining these immune treatments, like cellular treatments, with T-cell engagers or other immunotherapies…. Also, engineering these cells would be explored. Right now, we have these cells only expanded, but making CAR [chimeric antigen receptor] T cells or other types of engineered cell therapies would also be considered in the future.

Reference

Mushtaq MU. Tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TIL) therapy in metastatic melanoma. Presented at: 2025 National Immune Cell Effector Therapy Conference; July 26, 2025; Orlando, FL.