Until now, patients with advanced melanoma that has spread to
the brain have received a dire diagnosis. They survive only for
an average of four months. But cancer researchers at the
University of Sydney, Melanoma Institute Australia, Sydney’s
Westmead Hospital and the ACRF-funded Westmead Millennium
Institute, have for the first time found a drug which shrinks
brain tumours in these patients with advanced melanoma. Dr
Georgina Long of the University of Sydney said the drug, called
Dabrafenib, works by targeting a gene mutation found in many
melanoma cancers. The drug works by causing the cell to stop
multiplying and in many cases it shrinks and disappears. Dr
Long, together with her colleague Professor Rick Kefford tested
the drug on 46 melanoma patients, including 10 whose cancer had
metastasised and spread to their brain, and 22 non-melanoma
patients. Brain tumours in nine of the 10 patients shrank in the
first six weeks and completely disappeared in four patients.
“Brain metastases in melanoma are a major