New Treatment For Advanced Skin Cancer Almost Doubles Survival

A new therapy, recently approved for use in Europe, has shown a significant effect in the treatment for melanoma by almost doubling survival times in patients with advanced disease. According to an international study, patients given the drug vemurafenib (Zelboraf) gained several extra months of life, living an average of 16 months, compared to the average nine months that patients survived on conventional treatment. Prior to the development of vemurafenib, there had been no new drugs for the treatment of melanoma for more than a decade.