“This year was the year of melanoma,” said Dr. Atif Hussein, medical director of the Memorial Cancer Institute at Memorial Healthcare System in Hollywood.

Hussein is excited, not because the incidents of melanoma — a particularly nasty form of skin cancer that, when metastasized, can be among the deadliest cancers— have been increasing for at least 30 years.

Rather, Hussein is upbeat because of two breakthrough studies using two new drugs. The drugs, one of which, Yervoy, earned FDA approval in March, have “showed improved survival when compared to standard care,” he said.

“I never thought I would be excited in treating patients with melanoma because of the dismal outcome. Though not everyone responds, those that do, do for a long time. Several patients are alive without the disease for more than three years in the study,” Hussein said.

Breakthrough drugs

These new drugs, Ipilimumab, aka Yervoy, which revs up the immune system to fight tumors, and Vemurafenib, targeted at the V600E mutation in a gene called BRAF, are the first encouraging weapons in the fight against a cancer that, in its late stages, has a survival rate of just six months.

“For a long time, they used to call melanoma the kind that gives cancer a bad name and I think we’ve moved from that kind of approach. This drug [Yervoy] and another drug [Vemurafenib] that will most likely be approved, has changed the way we treat melanoma,” said Dr. José Lutzky, melanoma program director at Mount Sinai Comprehensive Cancer Center in Miami Beach.

Mount Sinai was South Florida’s participant in the clinical trial that resulted in March’s FDA approval of Yervoy. Lutzky was one of the co-writers of the study for The New England Journal of Medicine.

“To us, this is exciting and just a start of what we think is a new phase of melanoma treatment,” said Dr. Siddhartha Venkatappa, an oncologist for Baptist Health South Florida, who has offices in Kendall and Key West.

Skin cancer types

Melanoma should not be confused with two other, more common, forms of skin cancer: basal cell and squamous cell.

Basal cell carcinoma, most often the result of sun exposure and tanning booths, affects the top layer of the skin and is the most common form of cancer. It affects about two million Americans each year. It usually shows up on the face but can be found on the back and chest. It is often pearly in appearance and can bleed. It rarely spreads to other organs and can be removed by a dermatologist.

Squamous cell, also the result of sun exposure and tanning booths, appears as a rough, scaly surface on the upper layers of the skin around sun-damaged areas like the face, head, backs of arms. About 700,000 Americans annually get squamous cell carcinomas and these, too, can be treated relatively easily when caught early.

Both basal and squamous tend to impact fair-haired, light-skinned people and those with freckles are at particular risk.

But melanoma, which, in 2010 numbered 68,130 cases in America and 4,980 in Florida, can, in Stage 3 and 4, spread to the lymph nodes, lungs, brain and other areas of the body. Melanoma, which can appear as lesions in the pigment, or moles in shades of tan, brown, black, red, white or blue, also can result from family history, in addition to overexposure to ultraviolet rays. Melanoma can occur in all individuals, regardless of ethnic background and can appear on areas of the body that hadn’t seen extensive sun exposure.