Understanding pathways, the clinician view

During the last meeting of the Australasian Society for Dermatology Research, Pablo Fernandez-Peñas presented a review of the influence of cellular and biochemical pathways in understanding diseases. Pablo described how the use of BRAF inhibitors in melanoma created a number of cutaneous effects. Clinical findings and basic research (including original research by our group) helped to explain the underlying mechanisms. Now, checkpoint inhibitors are also creating new cutaneous effects. This is another opportunity to understand skin biology. Interestingly, all these effects can be explained due to signalling changes. And these changes are beyond the mutational paradigm that has been useful to explain many oncology mechanisms. Signalling pathways are critical and our group has established a proteomic platform to progress studies in cutaneous biology and pathology.