Dr. Vincent Ma, a medical oncologist and active researcher with UW Health | Carbone Cancer Center specializes in researching and treating this form of melanoma, which has had a low chance of responding to standard treatment and a short overall survival rate.
“Uveal melanoma is a rare cancer, but it is the most common type of eye cancer in adults. More progress needs to be made for this disease,” Ma said.
Surgery and radiation can treat this cancer, but there are limited beneficial treatment options when uveal melanoma spreads to the liver, the most common location for this disease to recur.
“We still don’t understand why it frequently comes back in the liver,” Ma said. “There is something about the liver that makes it an ideal environment for the cancer to return. When this happens, you need to see a medical oncologist to talk about treatment beyond surgery and radiation.”
In March 2024, Ma introduced a new treatment for uveal melanoma at Carbone Cancer Center called Hepzato. In this treatment, an interventional radiologist delivers a chemotherapy drug, melphalan, directly into the hepatic (liver) artery of patients whose uveal melanoma has only spread to their liver.
Carbone is one of about a dozen cancer centers across the United States authorized to administer this treatment, and it is the only one located within a 500-mile radius of Madison, Wis.
“We are lucky to have a fantastic team that can deliver this complex treatment here at Carbone,” Ma said.
The treatment requires patients to stay in the hospital’s intensive care unit for one night for close monitoring. Following that, patients are administered up to five additional treatments that occur every six to eight weeks. Ma first treated a patient with Hepzato in March.
Immunotherapy is also an option to treat uveal melanoma, but there is less than a 20% chance of response after the disease reaches the liver. The Hepzato approach offers more promising results.
“The studies showed a 30-40% response rate in the liver from Hepzato. Other available treatments outside of clinical trials have limited benefit,” Ma said.
Ma is looking forward to research developments that will continue to provide more options for uveal melanoma patients.
“Learning how and why treatments like Hepzato leads to an improved response in uveal melanoma is an exciting area to further investigate,” Ma said. “It is a stepping stone towards developing more treatment options of this rare disease.”
Ma oversees a variety of clinical trials at Carbone for skin and uveal melanomas. He also studies nuclear imaging biomarkers, such as PET scans, and blood-based biomarkers, which are biological components in the blood that can help doctors track whether a person has a disease and how patients are responding to treatment.
Ma hopes to find the connection between the blood samples of patients with melanoma and the clinical outcomes of patients on treatment.
“We are researching new ways to better assess treatment response in patients, including those with uveal melanoma. We are currently looking at blood samples and using PET scans to better predict response to therapy,” Ma said.