Posts tagged ‘BRAF Melanoma’

Zelboraf (vemurafenib) approved in metastatic melanoma

August 25th, 2011

Daedalus

Last week the hot news was the anticipated FDA approval of vemurafenib (Zelboraf™) in metastatic melanoma for patients with BRAF V600E mutations.

Sally Church on Pharma Strategy Blog has written extensively about new products in development for metastatic melanoma. As Sally notes in her recent blog post discussing the Zelboraf™ approval:

“the good news is that oncologists now have two new agents for treatment in 2011, which is very much a grand cru year for melanoma.”

A little known fact is that Sally is a former finalist in the UK Daily Telegraph newspaper’s wine taster of the year competition, so it is perhaps not surprising to see some wine references in her writing.

If you are interested in the price of Zelboraf™ – you can find it on Pharma Strategy Blog where Sally analyses the cost of a course of treatment and compares this to the price for ipilimumab.

Pieter Droppert’s write-up of the 2011 ASCO annual meeting plenary data on metastatic melanoma was recently published in the august issue of Pharmacy Today.

Understanding why melanoma patients develop resistance to PLX4032

April 25th, 2011

Daedalus

Targeted therapies for metastatic melanoma such as PLX4032 (vemurafenib) have shown dramatic effects in patients. However, resistance to BRAF inhibitors such as PLX4032 soon develops. The result is a need to understand how resistance occurs due to cross talk and how to overcome this through a rational drug combination strategy.

Sally Church on Pharma Strategy Blog delves into the topic of BRAF resistance with demonstrable enthusiasm. In her insightful post she discusses data presented in the plenary session at the recent annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) by Levi Garraway from Dana Farber.

As Sally discusses in some detail, the research identified a novel mutation in the downstream kinase MEK1 that may be the reason why patients become resistant to PLX4032.

You can watch Dr Garraway’s presentation as a free AACR webcast and can read more about the important implications of this research for melanoma new product development on Pharma Strategy blog.