A drug that targets a specific mutant protein in skin cancer improved survival in a clinical trial of 675 patients with advanced melanoma.

The drug vemurafenib inhibits a mutated form of the cell-growth-promoting protein BRAF. Mutations in this protein are found in around half of all melanomas. Paul Chapman of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York and his colleagues found that in their phase III trial of patients with metastatic melanoma and the BRAF mutation, almost half of those treated with vemurafenib responded to the drug. By contrast, the response rate in patients receiving an older chemotherapy called dacarbazine was only 5%.

Six months after treatment, 84% of those who received vemurafenib were still alive, compared with 64% of those who received dacarbazine.

N. Engl. J. Med. doi:10.1056/NEJMoa1103782 (2011)