Public release date: 16-Sep-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Hilary Graham hngraham@mdanderson.org 713-794-4383 University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center

HOUSTON A new study published online in Nature Medicine, led by scientists at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, describes the discovery of a novel drug combination aimed at a subset of melanoma patients who currently have no effective therapeutic options.

Melanoma patients have different responses to therapy, depending on what genes are mutated in their tumors. About half of melanomas have a mutation in the BRAF gene; while a quarter have a mutation in the NRAS gene.

New BRAF inhibitor drugs are effective against BRAF-mutant melanoma, but no comparable therapies are currently available against NRAS-mutant melanoma. For the first time, this study provides new hope for patients with NRAS-mutant melanoma that an effective targeted treatment might be developed in the coming years.

By analyzing a sophisticated, genetically engineered mouse model of NRAS-mutant melanoma with a novel systems biology approach, scientists discovered that combining two different classes of drugs shrinks these tumors.

The researchers, led by Lynda Chin, M.D., chair of the Department of Genomic Medicine and scientific director of the Institute for Applied Cancer Science, at MD Anderson together with colleagues from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute at Harvard Medical School and from Boston University discovered that the two drugs, which inhibit proteins Mek and Cdk4, complement one another by targeting unique cancer features.

"The lack of a drug like the BRAF inhibitor that works against NRAS means that there is still no effective treatment option for NRAS-mutant patients to fall back on," said Chin. "Developing an effective combination using existing drugs or drugs already in clinical development is a path to address this unmet need for this population of melanoma patients."

A roadmap for effective drug combinations

Researchers must first know what an effective treatment actually looks like before they can identify and develop effective drug combinations. To accomplish this, Chin and her colleagues generated an inducible NRAS (iNRAS) mouse model. In the model, activating mutant NRAS caused melanomas to form, while turning it off caused the melanomas to shrink exactly what an effective drug therapy should do.

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Drug combination against NRAS-mutant melanoma discovered

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