Over the past 30 years little progress has been made in the treatment of patients with a metastatic melanoma. Recently there have been two new developments. One of these is ipilimumab, a monoclonal antibody that blocks the function of the protein cytotoxic T lymphocyte-associated antigen 4 (CTLA4) which inhibits activated T lymphocytes. This gives the immune system a chance to build up an immune response to the melanoma. The other development is vemurafenib, a small molecule that inhibits a mutated protein (BRAF) that occurs in many melanomas. The BRAF mutation leads to uninhibited proliferation.
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