BAY 43-9006: early clinical data in patients with advanced solid malignancies.

Various signalling pathways can confer the malignant phenotype to a cell. Ras signalling proteins have been found to play an important role in controlling cellular growth. Raf-1 is a protein kinase that exerts its effects downstream of Ras in the mitogen-activated protein kinase pathway and is thus likely to be crucial in the development of the malignant phenotype. BAY 43-9006 is an orally administered selective inhibitor of Raf-1 and the first …