Onkológia 5/2011

Can we expect „ A new era“ in melanoma?

The incidence of melanoma is increasing worldwide, and the prognosis for patients with high-risk remains poor despite a lot of efforts. Standard treatment for patients with primary melanoma thicker than 2mm with or without regional metastases to lymph nodes is surgery followed by adjuvant IFNα therapy considering the risk factors. Patients with metastatic melanoma have a poor prognosis with a 5 year surival rate of about 5 %. There are many advances in the field of molecular biology to utilize the outcomes of the research in clinical practice. However, molecular analysis of tumors has revealed specific „driving“ pathways in melanomas that have become targets for therapy. Results of two new experimental agents have recently been reported for the treatment of patients with this disease. Ipilimumab, an antibody against the inhibitory lymphocyte receptor, CTLA-4 is the first and vemurafenib, an inhibitor of mutated BRAF melanoma, is the second one.

Keywords: prognostic factors, sentinel lymph nodes, treatment of melanoma