A trial of docetaxel with or without selumetinib for advanced melanoma (DOC-MEK)

This trial looked at docetaxel with or without selumetinib (AZD6244) for people whose melanoma cells didn’t have a change (mutation) in a gene called BRAF. This trial was for people whose melanoma had spread to the surrounding lymph nodes or to another part of the body. This is called advanced melanoma.

Doctors sometimes use chemotherapy drugs such as docetaxel (Taxotere) to treat advanced melanoma. But it doesn’t always work very well. Doctors hoped that using a new treatment called selumetinib with docetaxel may have worked better than docetaxel alone.

Selumetinib is a type of drug called a MEK inhibitor and it works by blocking growth signals. MEK is a protein that sends signals to cells telling them to divide and grow. Researchers hoped that selumetinib would reduce the amount of MEK and slow down or stop the growth of cancer.

The aims of this trial were to find out

• If docetaxel and selumetinib was better than docetaxel alone for advanced melanoma with no BRAF gene change

• More about the side effects