Tumor-Infiltrating Lymphocyte Therapy Tackles Treatment Blind Spot in Advanced Melanoma

• TIL therapy, a form of adoptive cell therapy, targets tumor-specific antigens using expanded autologous T lymphocytes to combat melanoma.

• The FDA approved lifileucel for unresectable/metastatic melanoma post–PD-1 and BRAF inhibitor treatment, based on promising safety and efficacy data.

Advanced melanoma is an aggressive disease that carried a very poor prognosis until the emergence of checkpoint inhibitors approximately 15 years ago, which gave us the ability to exploit the immunogenic nature of melanoma and improve survival significantly. However, there are still many patients who experience disease progression on checkpoint inhibitors.

Although therapeutic options after disease progression on anti–PD-1 and BRAF/MEK inhibitors have been limited both in terms of options and benefit, tumor-infiltrating lymphocyte (TIL) therapy has expanded the treatment landscape for patients with unresectable or metastatic melanoma.¹ The FDA granted accelerated approval in February 2024 to the TIL therapy lifileucel (Amtagvi) for the treatment of adult patients with unresectable or metastatic melanoma who received prior treatment with a PD-1–blocking antibody and a BRAF inhibitor, with or without a MEK inhibitor, if they have a BRAF V600 mutation.²

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