They’re lawyers and receptionists, philanthropists and film editors. Some are retired, some just starting families. What they have in common is metastatic melanoma, a cancer that will likely claim their lives in a matter of months. Standard treatments—including removal of tumors and chemotherapy—have failed to halt their advancing disease. But these patients have not given up. All have volunteered to take part in clinical trials designed to test novel therapies that could help rein in their tumor growth and possibly buy them some time. And thanks to two promising new approaches, these patients—and others like them—have reason to be hopeful.
The new treatments are more carefully aimed than the massive but indiscriminate hammer blow dealt by standard chemotherapeutics, which have always disappointed in the treatment of melanoma. One approach takes advantage of drugs that have been designed specifically to take down the mutant protein that is inappropriately activated in more ...
