Hi Wendy,
BRAF negative means that your Mum’s tumor doesn’t carry the specific BRAF mutation currently tested for and is therefore ‘wildtype’.
As for tumor profiling it is very important to keep in mind what you want to achieve with it- a long list of potential targets without the corresponding drug will set you back quite a bit of money but won’t give you additional treatment options.
Also, the devil is in the (technical ) detail. You’ll have to test on a tumor sample without knowing how representative the sample is, first for the tumor and then for all tumors in your Mum. Then, depending on the technique, you might get a positive though the mutation is only present in very few cells. All to say that there will be no guaranty that even if there was a drug against this specific target and your Mum took it that she would get a response for sure.
I therefore agree with Catherine to ask around who is targeting ‘unusual’ targets in Melanoma- meaning they’ve got an actual working drug against it- and then specifically screen for that.
Bettina