Yervoy and Zelboraf rapidly penetrating metastatic patient population in USA and Europe

In the USA and Europe there is strong physician desire for new therapies for the treatment of early stage melanoma, according to a new report from BioTrends Research, a Decision Resources unit, titled The TreatmentTrends Melanoma (US) and TreatmentTrends Melanoma (EU). This confirms there is higher use of adjuvant therapy which is often used to treat early stage melanoma in the US market compared to the major European markets (France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK).

Adjuvant therapies consist mainly of interferon therapies and, notably, the UK market has not fully adopted this therapeutic option, resulting in the UK having the lowest treatment rates in this setting. In the USA, adjuvant setting, interferon therapy is more commonly utilized with medical oncologists reporting a significant decrease in the use of high dose Intron A in the next six months, offset by an increase in the use of Sylatron, a pegylated form of interferon-alpha-2b marketed by Merck & Co and other therapies - such as Genentech/Roche’s Zelboraf (vemurafenib) and Bristol-Myers Squibb’s Yervoy (ipilimumab), and clinical trials.

BRAF screening in Europe is lower compared to the US market