Despite many exciting advances in recent years, there are still aspects of melanoma treatment that need to be further studied and understood, said Grace Cherry, NP, a nurse practitioner at UCLA Health.

We need more research. Not everyone responds to the treatments. It's a lot better now compared to 10 years ago ... and a lot of our patients are living longer. That's the good news.

However, we still have patients that don't respond. So we need to continue with clinical trials so we can improve that and hopefully find a cure for our patients. Something that was never even thought of for many years for advanced melanoma, but now we're actually seeing patients that are responding and perhaps are even cured. So we want to improve on that.

Another unmet need, I would say, would be to learn more about the [adverse event] profiles of these medications. Some of them can be really toxic as far as immunotherapies. And is there a way that we can predict [adverse events]? Is there a way that we can treat them better so that toxicity doesn't have to stop the patient from getting treatment or doesn't decrease the quality of their life? We definitely need more studies on that too.

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More for Melanoma: Nurse Discusses Unmet Needs

Nurses need to have a breadth of knowledge when it comes to immunotherapy, especially as it continues to become more widespread, said Grace Cherry, NP, MSN, RN, a nurse practitioner at the UCLA Melanoma Program. 

There's a lot of new changes that are going on. Immunotherapy is not just a treatment for melanoma anymore, it's a treatment for many other cancers. Nurses are frontline. They're the ones that give the medication, and our patients are looking to us to explain to them 'how does the drug work' and 'what can I expect?' So I think being up-to-date and being able to explain how they work and having a general knowledge of why we're doing clinical trials would really help us in our role of explaining that to the patients.

Nurses must stay up to date on immunotherapy advancements, since they are the frontline communicators with patients.

Grace Cherry, NP, MSN, RN

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More for Melanoma: Nurse Discusses Unmet Needs

Patients Rely on Nurses for Crucial Immunotherapy Information