ABSTRACT
First described by Hippocrates, malignant melanoma is the seventh most common type of cancer in young adults (Caraco et al. 2013). Melanoma is one of the most prevalent and severe types of skin cancers (Wadajkar et al. 2012), and according to the World Health Organization (WHO) data 132,000 melanoma cases occur every year worldwide. Even though recent data are not available yet, the incidence in 2008 for malignant melanoma increased progressively in the last decades especially in Australia, North America, and Northern Europe (Pacheco et al. 2012), with an estimated 46,000 deaths (Erdmann et al. 2013). Although earlier detection of melanoma increases the recovery prognostic to 80%, this value greatly decreases upon the development of metastasis (Pacheco et al. 2012), rapidly spreading to other organs and sites of the body, especially to the lungs (Carlson et al. 2007, Weber 2007). At this stage, resistance to almost every radioand chemotherapies is high (Chartrain et al. 2012).
