Melanoma Pathways....A Melanoma Molecular Disease Model

I came upon this article and diagram (Well...truth be told, Bentie did!!!) when we were doing some research for a friend.  While cellular pathways remain very complicated (and  our current understanding of them is probably only the tip of the melanoma pathway iceberg) I thought this diagram was helpful in demonstrating at which point various drugs and treatment combinations are aimed when we hear them described by our docs and in research.
This diagram and the explanation below is from:
A Melanoma Molecular Disease Model.  Vidwans SJ, Flaherty KT, Fisher DE, Tenenbaum JM, Travers MD, et al. (2011)PLoS ONE 6(3): e18257. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0018257

"The two major signaling pathways implicated in melanoma are the MAPK pathway (red) and the AKT/PI3K (green) pathway which regulate cell growth, proliferation and cell death.

There is a lot of cross-talk between these pathways and their downstream effectors, which we have classified into 8 pathways for simplicity to account for differences in treatment modalities (e.g. signaling through NRAS could affect both MAPK and AKT/PI3K pathways). The additional 6 pathways are: c-KIT (pink), CDK (blue), GNAQ/GNA11 (brown), MITF (orange), NRAS (yellow), and P53/BCL (purple). The complex relationship among BRAF, ARF/INK4A (via dashed line), p16, and p14ARF connotes an alternative splicing relationship."

Now that's about as clear as a colorful mud-pie, isn't it??? - c