Dr. Sekulic on Molecular Testing in Advanced Melanoma

Aleksandar Sekulic, MD, PhD, chief resident associate, Dermatology, Clinician Investigator Training Program, Mayo Clinic, discusses the rationale for molecular testing in patients with advanced melanoma.

There are various molecular tests that can be viewed as an adjunct to diagnosis and prognosis of melanoma. It is routine to conduct molecular testing for BRAF mutation to help oncologists determine if patients will respond to BRAF inhibitors. This type of molecular testing should always be implemented, Sekulic explains.

In a broader sense, molecular testing aims to find other targets that may not have defined therapies associated with them, Sekulic says. This challenge has led researchers to form the Melanoma Dream Team for the Stand Up to Cancer trial. This will determine if patients can be treated with specific therapies based on molecular test findings and, if so, what the best practices would be used to accomplish this. Within this trial, researchers are using whole-exome sequencing and long insert whole genome sequencing.