Yes, what your doc told you is true. Anti-PD-1, whether nivolumab (Opdivo) or pembrolizumab (Keytruda), has what researchers refer to as a roughly "40% response rate" when used as a single agent. Meaning, of 100 patients with melanoma given the drug, 40 will respond and 60 will not. Ipilimumab (Yervoy) has a 15% response rate. These rates increase to 50+% when the ipi/nivo combo is utilized. All of these drugs are categorized as 'immunotherapy'. A positive about these responses is that with immunotherapy, researchers find that many of these responses are "durable"….meaning last over years. There is more info under "immunotherapy" in this post if you are interested:
https://chaoticallypreciselifeloveandmelanoma.blogspot.com/2017/08/melanoma-intel-primer-for-current.html
While melanoma therapy has made tremendous strides in the past 8 years….we clearly have a long way to go! c
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