BRAF Mutation in Skin Cancer and Thyroid Papillary Carcinoma

Post:
Possible Cure for Skin Cancer?????

Primary Research:
Davies, Helen (2002). Mutations of the BRAF gene in human cancer. The Journal Nature. www.nature.com/nature.

Post Sharing a Common Thread:
Turn off the Switch for Thyroid Papillary Carcinoma Cancer!!!
Primary Research:
Cohen, Y. et. al ( 2003). BRAF Mutation in Papillary Thyroid Carcinoma. Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Vol. 95, No. 8.

The, Possible Cure for Skin Cancer blog, posted by Charles C., caught my attention because, it is interesting how exposure to the environment (such as UV light from the sun) and other things, can cause someone to suddenly be at risk for having skin cancer. Sometimes people don’t tend to think twice about any random mark that might develop on there skin since it might be so small at the time, because of this lack of care many people don’t realize that it can actually be a sign of skin cancer until it gets bigger and out of controlled. Skin Cancer is also one of the most common cancers around, it is important for me to understand why it is so common and what can we do to cure it. This article suggested that researchers discovered the mutation of a gene known as BRAF a couple of years ago, that is seen in skin cancer patient’s malignant melanomas and even in normal cell patients. Malignant Melanomas is usually linked with skin cancer and it derives from a melanocyte, which can be a dark-pigmented benign tumor or malignant which metastasizes rapidly.
Another blog, Turn off the Switch for Thyroid Papillary Carcinoma Cancer, posted by Tanya M. also mentions a BRAF mutation and it’s involvement in papillary thyroid cancer and melanoma. The primary article for this research explains the large amount of mutations in BRAF that occurs in both melanoma and papillary thyroid carcinoma and it also describes how the RAF kinase inhibitor (12) can be a new way that they can try to treat these tumors. In, A Possible Cure for Skin Cancer, researchers also came to the conclusion that there might be a kinase inhibitor drug out there that they might be able to use to inhibit activity for the BRAF protein. Although, this article does not talk about papillary thyroid carcinoma cancer, it focuses on malignant melanomas and how they were also able to find a point mutation which causes the proteins to phosphorylate. These articles are similar to the discussions my classmates and I had in our classroom because, it brings up cell proliferation, point mutations, and even cell death. It also goes into detail about kinase activity and the serine and threonine kinase (that was also talked about in class), which is what the BRAF protein is.
The questions that remain with me regarding the information I had analyzed are:
1) Since the BRAF protein is also in normal cells, according to the Possible Cure for Cancer blog, is this why skin cancer is more common in humans than other cancers?
2) If researchers come up with a drug that will somehow treat these mutations, will it affect normal cells in any way?
3) How exactly does BRAF cause mutations in papillary thyroid cancer and where is it located?