Ipilimumab Data Impress, But Vaccine Control Could Complicate Review

CHICAGO - The Phase III results for Bristol-Myers Squibb's ipilimumab represent a breakthrough in melanoma, stole the show at the 2010 American Society of Clinical Oncology annual meeting and are generally expected to presage the first approval of a CTLA-4 inhibitor and the first approval in the disease for more than a decade. But the unexpectedly lackluster performance of an experimental vaccine used with the trial drug and as a control has created some interesting clinical and regulatory plot twists