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Personalized medicine is based on: 1) improved clinical or non-clinical methods (including biomarkers) for a more discriminating and precise diagnosis of diseases; 2) targeted therapies of the choice or the best drug for each patient among those available; 3) dose adjustment methods to optimize the benefit-risk ratio of the drugs chosen; 4) biomarkers of efficacy, toxicity, treatment discontinuation, relapse, etc. Unfortunately, it is still too often a theoretical concept because of the lack of convenient diagnostic methods or treatments, particularly of drugs corresponding to each subtype of pathology, hence to each patient. Stratified medicine is a component of personalized medicine employing biomarkers and companion diagnostics to target the patients likely to present the best benefit-risk balance for a given active compound. The concept of targeted therapy, mostly used in cancer treatment, relies on the existence of a defined molecular target, involved or not in the pathological process, and/or on the existence of a biomarker able to identify the target population, which should logically be small as compared to the population presenting the disease considered. Targeted therapies and biomarkers represent important stakes for the pharmaceutical industry, in terms of market access, of return on investment and of image among the prescribers. At the same time, they probably represent only the first generation of products resulting from the combination of clinical, pathophysiological and molecular research, i.e. of translational research., (© 2015 Société Française de Pharmacologie et de Thérapeutique.)

Melanoma is a skin cancer whose incidence is increasing steadily. The recent discovery of frequent and recurrent genetic alterations in cutaneous melanoma allowed a molecular classification of tumors into distinct subgroups, and paved the way for targeted therapy. Several signaling pathways are involved in the progression of this disease with oncogenic mutations affecting signaling pathways: MAPK, PI3K, cAMP and cyclin D1/CDK4. In each of these pathways, several potential therapeutic targets have been identified and specific inhibitors have already been developed and have shown clinical efficacy. The use of these inhibitors is often conditioned by tumors genotyping. In France, melanomas genotyping is supported by the platforms of the National Cancer Institute (INCA), which implemented a national program ensuring access to innovation for personalized medicine. The identification of new targets in melanoma supplies a very active dynamic development of innovative molecules contributing to changing the therapeutic landscape of this pathology., (Copyright © 2014 Société Française du Cancer. Published by Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.)