Malignant melanoma with in‑transit metastases refractory to programmed cell death‑1 inhibitor successfully treated with local interferon‑β injections: A case report
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- Published online on: August 10, 2021 https://doi.org/10.3892/mco.2021.2374
- Article Number: 212
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Copyright: © Takahara et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of Creative Commons Attribution License.
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Abstract
In‑transit metastases (ITMs) in patients with malignant melanoma (MM) are associated with poor prognosis and a worse disease burden compared with MM without ITMs. A substantial population of patients with ITMs show no or only poor responses to newly developed therapies, such as immune checkpoint inhibitors or molecular‑targeted agents. It is difficult to control the exudate and bleeding from ITMs when these medications are ineffective. In Japan, local injection of interferon‑β (IFN‑β) has been licensed for years as adjuvant therapy for MM. However, the evidence for IFN‑β effectiveness for ITMs remains low. The present report describes a case of MM with multiple ITMs that did not respond to a programmed cell death‑1 inhibitor and local injections of IFN‑β at 3 million IU/day for 5 days/4 weeks but remitted upon increasing the amount of IFN‑β injections to 10 consecutive days/4 weeks. Local IFN‑β therapy could be an option for improving the quality of life of patients.
