Molecular Targeting of a BRAF Mutation in Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma: Case Report and Literature Review

Current standard-of-care treatment for advanced pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma is mainly based on conventional cytotoxic chemotherapy. Until recently, no randomized clinical trials had shown any clinically meaningful outcome benefit from targeted therapy in this indication. This is in contrast to many other tumor types. The majority of pancreatic tumors are driven by KRAS mutations, which are generally not amenable to targeted therapy. Driving mutations in the BRAF oncogene have proven to be an interesting molecular target in the management of advanced melanoma and colorectal adenocarcinoma and can be found in 3% of patients with advanced pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma. Here, we report objective tumor response to treatment with the combination of the BRAF inhibitor vemurafenib and the MEK inhibitor cobimetinib in a patient with poorly differentiated, V600E mutant, advanced pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma.