Relief In The Caymans - Brent Everett

iLog-Mundi: A SECOND CHANCE AGAINST MELANOMA, www.elmundo.es

PLX4032 alphabet soup seemed destined to become an effective therapy against certain very advanced skin tumors. No However, as demonstrated the effectiveness of this drug, the researchers became aware that the answers were very short: after a few months the patients had developed resistance and melanoma relapse again. Two papers now publishes 'Nature' explain key might clarify this phenomenon.

melanomas responding to new experimental compound have mutations in a key gene called B-RAF, a 'mistake' that carry between 50% and 60% of patients with this tumor. However, after six or nine months of dramatic responses, oncologists were confronted almost always with the frustration of seeing the disease return.

Scientists at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), Dana Farber Cancer Center and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (all in USA) have now discovered several genetic tricks that allow the cancer to develop an additional mutation to disable treatment. The good news is that these new changes may in turn become a potential target for new drugs, although it will have to wait several more years.

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As explained Dr. Antoni Ribas, one of the oncologists at UCLA who collaborated Roger Lo in the first work, "at first it made sense to think that the cancer had developed a second mutation in the gene B-RAF to evade the drug." However, what they found was that the melanoma can develop alternative ways in three different genes in B-RAF to continue to divide outside the treatment.

With the three mutations found by both studies, said Dr. Ribas, can explain 50% of relapses, but will have to continue investigating to find the trick to making use of skin cancer in the other 50% of cases.

Although it is too early to translate their findings into a new B-RAF inhibitor more effective than PLX4032, I welcomed the research: "Now, when a melanoma patient falls, we say that we are working 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to discover an effective alternative ".

"PLX4032 is a drug you get a dramatic response rates, we now have to get that last longer," says oncologist Catalan, "so we probably have to combine it with other drugs that prevent cell 'escape' his action. "