Overcoming metastatic melanoma with BRAF inhibitors.

Melanoma has the capacity to spread via the blood stream to the brain, and has been notoriously resistant to drug therapy. An activating mutation in the gene encoding BRAF is known to be responsible for half of melanomas. This article provides a review of GSK2118436 and PLX4032 as potential therapeutics for the treatment of melanomas by inhibiting oncogenic BRAF.