Pediatric melanoma immunotherapy: A retrospective examination of a decade of clinical experience at a tertiary care center

Background: Pediatric or adolescent melanoma, defined as melanoma in patients below age 20, is an infrequent occurrence that represents 0.4% of the approximately 87,110 new cases of melanoma diagnosed in the United States annually. As a result, few data exist to guide therapy that prolong survival, in particular with more recently developed immune therapies, such as immune checkpoint inhibitors. This lack of data is especially important as there is growing evidence that pediatric melanoma differs in its presentation, gene expression, and behavior from adult melanoma, and that response to therapy may vary by age.