ABSTRACT
The medical therapy of melanoma has not improved significantly, despite the experimental application of a multitude of new cytotoxic drugs. The advent of highly purified recombinant human interferon alpha permitted careful investigations of a range of dosage regimens and durations of treatment using dosages higher than possible for metastatic melanoma. Trials of combinations of interferon alpha with chemotherapy have employed dacarbazine, low dose cyclophosphamide, and difluormethylornithine. The role of cytotoxic and hormonal agents, as well as radiotherapy in combination with alpha interferon, require further exploration in melanoma. Reports indicate that interferon alpha as a single agent induces clinical remissions comparable in frequency and quality with the best known single chemotherapeutic agents for melanoma to date. Moderate or high doses of interferon alfa-2 doses appear to be associated with the highest frequencies of clinical response in metastatic melanoma, and clinical response appears to vary inversely with the size of tumor masses.
