2 Clinical Trials for Various Conditions
Given the poor prognosis and limited treatment options available for patients with mucosal or acral/lentiginous melanomas who develop metastatic disease, genetic discoveries of KIT mutations in these cancers present the need to test multi-targeted kinase inhibitors with potent KIT inhibitory activity in this patient population. Imatinib and other tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) have the potential to be effective in this patient population, but patients may develop resistance to treatment. Therefore, in this study, we propose to test nilotinib in patients with metastatic mucosal, acral, or chronically sun-damaged melanoma following treatment with another TKI.
The purpose of this study is to evaluate how effective imatinib (Gleevec) is in treating acral/lentiginous and mucosal melanoma which has spread to other parts of the body in patients who's disease carries a c-kit mutation. Imatinib is a protein-kinase inhibitor. It is believed that imatinib may be effective in blocking signals on certain cancer cells which allow the malignant cells to multiply and spread.