Novel Targets in the Treatment of Advanced Melanoma: New First-Line Treatment Options

Melanoma is a challenging malignan-cy to treat and, with its increasing incidence, is currently the fifth and sev-enth most commonly diagnosed cancer in men and women, respectively.1,2 Of the 75,000 new diagnoses estimated to occur in 2012, nearly 15 % will have un-resectable stage III or IV disease, with a 5-year survival rate of 15%.2 Treatment recommendations for these patients have remained nearly unchanged for the past 40 years.3 However, in 2011, two agents, ipilimumab and vemurafenib, were ap-proved by the Food and Drug Adminis-tration (FDA) based on data demonstrat-ing improved survival and response rates (RRs) superior to the standard of care. For this review article we accessed MEDLINE and International Pharmaceu-tical Abstracts (1970-November 2012) using the key words metastatic melano-ma, ipilimumab, vemurafenib, dabraf-enib, and trametinib. Included studie