Vemurafenib: A Potentially New Standard of Care? Melanoma is the most deadly form of skin cancer. Advanced metastatic melanoma, stage III or IV, has been incurable and relatively untreatable with “less than 10% of patients responding to traditional chemotherapy” regimens (PubMed Health, 2011). Progress in this area of oncology research has been very slow with the “average prognosis for patients with stage IV metastatic melanoma being 8-18 months” (Chapman., 2011). Proven research shows that the standard chemotherapy regimens don’t actually extend the lives of these patients. The standard first line treatment for late stage metastatic melanoma is dacarbazine (DTIC), used either alone as a single agent or in combination with other chemotherapy agents, and the effects have been minimal. The dacarbazine regimen usually shrinks the tumors for a temporary period, “about 3-6 months,” and then they begin to grow again. (Melanoma Skin Cancer, 2011). Recent research in the past five years has led to some targeted immunotherapy drugs like ipilimumab and peginterferon alpha-2b which have shown some promising results in helping to extend life expectancies for these patients. On August 17, 2011 the Food and Drug Administration gave some much needed hope to these patients with the approval of vemurafenib (Zelboraf). An orally administered targeted chemotherapy agent that has shown statistically significant results in “reducing the risk of the persons illness progressing and improved short term survival rates” of people with metastatic melanoma who have the BRAF V600E mutation as compared to standard treatments of dacarbazine in a Randomized Phase III large multi-center clinical trial (Vemurafenib - New Drug for Melanoma Skin Cancer, 2011). Vemurafenib is a kinase inhibitor that targets and acts to block the BRAF V600E
