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Epidemiology of Melanoma

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Pathology and Epidemiology of Cancer

Abstract

As of 2015, melanoma is the fifth most common malignancy in males and sixth among females in the United States (US), and its incidence is one of the fastest growing among all cancers in the United States. Moreover, melanoma accounts for the majority of skin cancer deaths, leading to over 9900 deaths in the US in 2014 (1). Our increasing knowledge of the molecular underpinnings of melanoma has been leveraged into remarkable therapeutic triumphs. In 2002, the discovery of the V600E mutation in the protein kinase BRAF was published in Nature (2). This missense mutation, which results in a valine to glutamic acid substitution at the 600th amino acid, constitutively activates BRAF and serves as an important driver of malignancy in 40 to 60 % of melanomas. This discovery has consequently served as an important therapeutic target, and the first anti-BRAF (V600E) targeted-drug was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) only nine years later after the initial discovery. This story highlights the explosive pace of discovery and clinical translation in the field. This chapter reviews our current understanding of the epidemiology of melanoma, informed by the ongoing revolution in our molecular understanding of the disease. 1. Siegel et al. (CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians 64:9–29, [118]). 2. Davies et al. (Nature 417:949–954, [42]).

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  1. Harvard Medical School, 50 Staniford Street, Boston, MA, 02114, USA

    Sameer Gupta & Hensin Tsao

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  1. Center for Molecular Oncologic Pathology, Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, Massachusetts, USA

    Massimo Loda

  2. Department of Epidemiology, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts, USA

    Lorelei A. Mucci

  3. Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, USA

    Megan L. Mittelstadt

  4. King’s College London, Guy’s Hospital, London, United Kingdom

    Mieke Van Hemelrijck

  5. Department of Pathology, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Brigham & Women’s Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, USA

    Maura Bríd Cotter

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Gupta, S., Tsao, H. (2017). Epidemiology of Melanoma. In: Loda, M., Mucci, L., Mittelstadt, M., Van Hemelrijck, M., Cotter, M. (eds) Pathology and Epidemiology of Cancer. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-35153-7_31

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