Mutations of the BRAF gene in human cancer¶
Why this mattered¶
Before this 2002 Nature paper, melanoma was not generally understood as a disease with a single, recurrent, druggable kinase lesion at its center. Davies and colleagues showed that somatic BRAF mutations occurred in 66% of malignant melanomas, that most clustered in one activating substitution then called V599E and now known as V600E, and that mutant BRAF proteins had increased kinase activity and transforming capacity. This moved BRAF from being one component of the RAS-RAF-MEK-ERK pathway to a concrete oncogenic driver in human cancer.
The paradigm shift was that a common solid tumor could be reclassified by an activating kinase mutation in a way that immediately suggested therapeutic intervention. After this paper, melanoma research could ask not only where tumors arose anatomically or histologically, but whether they were BRAF-mutant, dependent on MAPK signaling, and potentially vulnerable to pathway inhibition. It also helped validate systematic cancer genome screening as a route to discovering actionable drivers rather than merely cataloguing mutations.
Its downstream importance became visible in the next decade: selective BRAF inhibitors such as vemurafenib produced improved survival in BRAF V600E melanoma, and later combinations with MEK inhibitors addressed resistance and pathway reactivation. The paper therefore sits at the start of a line from cancer genome discovery to companion diagnostics, genotype-selected trials, and modern targeted therapy across melanoma and other BRAF-mutant cancers.
Abstract¶
(no abstract available)
Related¶
- enables → Improved Survival with Vemurafenib in Melanoma with BRAF V600E Mutation — Identification of recurrent BRAF mutations in melanoma enabled targeted clinical testing of vemurafenib against BRAF V600E tumors.
- cite ← Improved Survival with Vemurafenib in Melanoma with BRAF V600E Mutation — The vemurafenib trial targets the BRAF V600E mutation whose cancer relevance was established by Davies et al.'s discovery of frequent BRAF mutations.
- cite ← Activating Mutations in the Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor Underlying Responsiveness of Non–Small-Cell Lung Cancer to Gefitinib — The EGFR lung-cancer mutation paper cites BRAF mutations as precedent that recurrent activating kinase mutations can define oncogene-driven human cancers.