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Case Reports
. 2016 Aug 12:16:634.
doi: 10.1186/s12885-016-2657-7.

A case report of a patient with metastatic ocular melanoma who experienced a response to treatment with the BRAF inhibitor vemurafenib

A Maleka  1   2 , G Åström  1   3 , P Byström  4 , G J Ullenhag  5   6
Affiliations
Case Reports

A case report of a patient with metastatic ocular melanoma who experienced a response to treatment with the BRAF inhibitor vemurafenib

A Maleka et al. BMC Cancer. .

Abstract

Background: Conjunctival malignant melanoma (CMM) is a rare malignancy and in the advanced setting there is no effective treatment. In contrast, half of cutaneous melanomas have BRAF mutations and treatment with BRAF inhibitors is established for patients with disseminated disease. The most common form of ocular melanoma, uveal melanoma, lacks these mutations, however, their presence has been reported for CMM.

Case presentation: We used the BRAF inhibitor vemurafenib to treat a 53 year-old female suffering from a BRAF(V600E) mutated metastatic CMM. The patient benefited from the treatment, a response was evident within a week and she experienced a progression free survival of four months.

Conclusions: To our knowledge, this is the first described case of response to vemurafenib treatment in a patient with ocular melanoma.

Keywords: BRAF inhibitor; BRAF mutation; Conjunctival malignant melanoma; Ocular melanoma; Vemurafenib.

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Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
a FDG-PET/CT in December 2012, prior to BRAF inhibitor therapy, showed intensely FDG avid lesions in the orbit, the parotid glad and the lung post AdCD40L treatment. b PET/CT in May 2013, after the initiation of the treatment with vemurafenib, showed that all the previously described intensely FDG avid lesions had lower SUVmax uptake. Physiologic FDG uptake in right posterior vocal cord is observed. Black arrow: metastasis in right parotid gland. White arrow: metastasis in right orbit. Striped arrow: lung metastasis
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Schematic timeline from the day the patient was diagnosed with conjunctival malignant melanoma (CMM) until she was deceased. PD: progressive disease
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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