Posts tagged ‘melanoma drugs’

At the recent Association of Health Care Journalists (AHCJ) annual meeting in Philadelphia that Pieter Droppert attended, one of the keynote speakers was Francis Collins, Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

In his presentation he drew the attention of the assembled audience to exciting new research supported by the NIH on whole-exome sequencing of melanoma.

This research published recently in Nature Genetics has led to the discovery of the GRIN2A mutation and further insight into the association between the glutamate pathway and melanoma.  GRIN2A mutations were found in 33% of NIH/NCI sample set.

Glutamate antagonists limit tumor growth and may be a new druggable target in melanoma.

Sally Church has written extensively about melanoma.  In a post on Pharma Strategy Blog, Sally looks in more detail at the discovery of the GRIN2A mutation and what this means for melanoma new product development. You can read more here.