BRAF and cancer: Showing further importance of the MAPK pathway, a recent study by Chapman et al. identified that seven out of 161 (4%) myeloma patients harboured a previously unobserved mutation in the BRAF gene [5]. BRAF encodes a serine/threonine-protein kinase in which activating mutations are known to be important in many cancers including melanoma and hairy cell leukemia [90].