From what I understand, this was successful on a melanomas with that certain gene. It's certainly good news though.

(Esp. since I had an intermediate melanoma cut off my shoulder in Sept., had a sentinal lymph node found to be clean in Nov., and just had my most recent three month check come up clean. But there is still an outside chance that something could turn up.)

Glad to hear that your followups have come up clean, danf. It sounds like all good news so far.

The compound treats those specific melanomas with the gene mutation, but apparently some mutate further to come back. Still, six to nine months of added survival time is considered a huge success for something like melanoma.

NA thanks for this, I'm trying to keep up with the latest in MM reserach and had only abstracts to look at. It's fascinating to see the pressures behind the scenes to get adequate combinations out there.

A beloved cousin had a huge MM removed 5 years ago, and unfortunately there was sentinel node involvement. The immonotherapy was horrendous and she only managed at half the regular dose for the year.

We've strongly encouraged her to go down the acid route, juicing large amounts of raw fruit and veg concerating on beta carotenes, on the understanding that there is no evidence it is effective but it can't harm and is a healthy addition to her diet. There's also placebo to consider and harness.

She felt enough confidence in her future to get married recently, one of the happiest days of our lives.

Thanks for posting this. It's the first time I've seen trials for MM treatment that were so specific as to target a mutation in a kinase in the melanoma genome. The clinical trials I've read about were always disheartingly general: treatments to rev up your immune system or target angiogenesis. And yes, six to nine months increase in survival time is huge in this field.