Current Treatment Paradigms for Advanced Melanoma with Brain Metastases

TL;DR

This paper reviews current treatment strategies for advanced melanoma with brain metastases and highlights the need for multidisciplinary care and personalized approaches.

Contribution

The paper provides a narrative review addressing controversies in treatment sequencing and emphasizes the potential for future personalized therapies.

Findings

Integration of systemic therapies with local treatments is key for maximizing outcomes in melanoma brain metastases.

Current clinical practices do not fully align with guidelines, highlighting unresolved issues in treatment sequencing.

Future advancements may enable comprehensive tumor characterization and personalized treatment approaches.

Abstract

The therapeutic management of melanoma brain metastases has undergone a profound revolution during recent decades. Optimal integration of systemic therapies with local treatments seems to represent the strategy to pursue in order to maximize clinical outcomes, stressing the need for real multidisciplinary care in this setting of patients. However, the current approach in the clinics does not necessarily reflect what the current guidelines state, and several pending issues are present, from the ideal therapeutic sequence between stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS) and drug administration to the current role of surgery and whole brain radiotherapy (WBRT), all of which need to be addressed. This narrative review aims to provide practical help for navigating the current controversies, with an eye towards possible future advancements in the field, which could help to obtain a comprehensive molecular characterization of the tumor and a more personalized patient-centered therapeutic approach.