Melanoma

Christine Tabery digs deep into the emotional landscape of dealing with cancer as a caregiver to her husband, who has metastatic melanoma, feeling everything he feels just as if it were happening to her.

In January 2022, the FDA approved Kimmtrak (tebentafusp-tebn), a novel type of immunotherapy, for the treatment of adults with advanced or spreading uveal melanoma, a rare and aggressive type of melanoma that affects the eye. Kimmtrak is the first drug approved for this type of melanoma.

Several immunotherapies known as immune checkpoint inhibitors are available today for patients with melanoma, as well as targeted therapies for patients with a BRAF or MEK gene mutation, but there are no effective treatments approved for patients with metastatic (spreading) or nonresectable (cannot be removed by surgery) melanoma whose disease progressed (got worse) after using an immune checkpoint inhibitor, or a BRAF or MEK inhibitor for those with gene mutations.

Melanoma is a type of skin cancer that begins in the melanocytes, skin cells that give the skin its color. Melanoma is a serious cancer, but when caught early, it is highly treatable.

Diagnosed with melanoma a few weeks after her wedding, Meredith died of the disease 4 months later, at age 35. Her family created Meredith’s Mission for Melanoma, a non-profit organization, to support melanoma research and increase awareness of this deadly cancer.