High BRAF variant allele frequency predicts poor outcomes in metastatic melanoma patients treated with BRAF/MEK inhibitors.

ABSTRACT:

Background

BRAF/MEK inhibitors have improved the outcome in metastatic melanoma (MM) patients harboring a BRAF mutation, but no biomarker predictive of response has been identified.

Methods

We conducted a retrospective analysis on 264 MM patients that had received first-line targeted therapy with BRAF/MEK inhibitors. Next-generation sequencing (NGS) was performed on tissue biopsies, and samples with > 30% tumor cellularity were included in the study. The impact of BRAF variant allele frequency (BRAF-VAF) on clinical treatment outcomes was analyzed.

Results

BRAF-VAF was dichotomized using two approaches. (1) The "surv_cutpoint" function identified two different cut-off for progression-free survival (PFS: 44.05%) and overall survival (OS:45.1%). Patients with BRAF-VAF >

SUBMITTER: Guida M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12713232 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature