Nevada's super-sunny climate makes us all prime candidates for the deadliest form of skin cancer: Melanoma. Researchers are working hard to find better treatments, though, and one major success is the drug "Zelboraf". That's the brand name. The generic name is vemurafenib.
Zelboraf treats one of the 3 or 4 genetic pathways that lead to melanoma. A person with stage four melanoma would be tested for the gene mutation B-RAF before treatment. About 50% of melanoma patients, especially young patients, have a mutation of this type.
The drug was recently approved by the Food and Drug Administration, and it was used for the very first time in our state on three patients at Comprehensive Cancer Centers of Nevada. Dr Wolfram Samlowski and his colleague Dr Gregory Obara, jumped at the chance to help these patients with the new oral drug. Dr. Samlowski told 8 News Now that Zelboraf keeps the cancer "from progressing for at least a while and the survival difference between treatment with this oral agent and standard chemotherapy is probably 20% better." Zelboraf is also less toxic than chemotherapy, and because it's taken by mouth, it's easier to administer.
Melanoma has gotten a lot of attention in recent years because, although it's the deadliest skin cancer, it's also preventable to a large extent. In the last forty years, the number of cases has increased, but so has awareness. Dr. Samlowski said, "Fortunately, patients and physicians are becoming more educated about that and we're detecting many melanomas very early. They're cured with surgery, but the fact that the number keeps increasing means we need to be more vigilant about sun protection, sunscreen."
Dr. Samlowski said Zelboraf "is part of the new trend in cancer treatment. "The drug interferes with the "signals" that cancer cells need to grow. So if you have far advanced melanoma, this drug can produce a very dramatic improvement in how patients' symptoms are being experienced and improvement in pain, size of tumors, but it also slows or stops the growth of cancer."
13-thousand Americans are diagnosed with melanoma every year and 6-8 thousand have metastatic melanoma, meaning it has spread.
To find out more about Dr. Samlowski at Comprehensive Cancer Centers of Nevada:
http://www.cccnevada.com/our-physicians/wolfram-samlowski-m-d/You can also find Dr. Obara on the same website.
To find out more about preventing and diagnosing skin cancer:
http://www.cancer.org/cancer/skincancer-melanoma/index 
