New Melanoma Drug Shrinks Tumors

Melanoma, a skin cancer tumor which often kills people within a nine month period, may have a new hope for a cure. A very small study of an experimental drug is giving hope to both doctors and people with advanced melanoma. This new drug may allow doctors to treat the disease as a chronic disease not a fatal one.

The drug called PLX4032 seems to help shrink the tumors of people with the disease. Thirty-two people were tested with the drug and eighty-one percent of them saw their tumors shrink, while others said the drug kept the disease in check, meaning it kept the tumor from growing for at least seven months. The co author of the study, Paul Chapman, was amazed at how well this drug had worked in this study.

“This is the biggest breakthrough in melanoma, that we have ever seen”, said Lynn Schuchte a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania. She said some of the patients had shown improvement within days. There are side effects with this drug that include joint pain, rash and fatigue.

The study said that some of the patients had developed skin cancers that were not deadly. For now doctors are able to put the disease in reverse and stop the tumor from growing but the main goal is to get rid of the cancerous tumor for good.