Melanoma in the early years was described as a benign mole that continued to grow and could be recognized by an irregular shape and discoloration of the mole (Sober et al., 1979). These cancer cells were well known for their ability to spread around the body quickly and avoid the therapeutic treatment, creating a dangerous situation (Li et al., 2001). When detected early, Melanoma could be removed successfully by a surgical procedure, but when metastasized, the cancer cells were much harder to kill, and treatment with chemotherapy and radiation were not much help, leading to a poor prognosis. (Sober et al., 1979; Irie et al., 2004). This led to copious amounts of research. Researchers linked that the first step in progression of Melanoma comes from a common melanocytic nevus, whose cells lost a checkpoint in the cell cycle and began to over proliferate (Clark et al., 1984; Carson et al., 2012). Inside these melanocytic nevi, over proliferation could be caused by a mutation in a proto-oncogene that activated the MAPK pathway, inhibite
d tumor suppressors, and allowed melanoma characterized cells to proliferate wildly (Florenes et at., 1998; Florenes et al., 1999; Kortylewski et al., 2001). Specifically, a high percentage of melanoma cases were linked to a mutation in the proto-oncogene BRAF (Colombino et al., 2012; Davies et al., 2002). Understanding this allowed scientist to tackle new ways of therapy. For example, immunotherapy and targeted therapy in melanoma cases were shown to be more successful than the previous therapies when studied and showed great room for more research (Deken et al., 2016; Moreno et al., 2015; Koya et al., 2012; Larkin et al., Long et al., 2014; Ribas et al., 2019; Robert et al., 2015) These findings struck a lot of interest in research that focused on the BRAF gene, its mutations, and its effects that lead to melanoma. By taking this knowledge about melanoma and emphasizing the focus on targeted therapies that will inhibit the effects caused by mutated BRAF in the MAPK pathway, the prognosis of Melanoma cancer will improve tremendously.