Tracking evolution of melanoma through therapy resistance

Overview

Melanoma is the fifth most common type of cancer and the most frequent among the young adult population in Europe. Immunotherapy has greatly improved survival for advanced melanoma, but almost half of melanoma patients still lose their lives to cancer.

Melanoma is at the cutting edge of novel immuno-oncology strategies such as checkpoint inhibitors, tebentafusp (first-in-class bispecific molecule), as well as adoptive cell therapy. But we still don’t fully understand the mechanisms behind resistance and when they occur during tumour progression, although we know they develop numerous ways of hiding from the immune system or reducing its activity.

The melanoma programme leverages multiple large scale multi-omic translational projects to explore mechanisms of response and resistance to immunotherapy, tumour evolution and biomarker discovery.

Radiologic images of a patient indicating thorax upon initiation of stage IV metastatic melanoma, showing complete extracranial response to BRAF inhibitor, followed by rapid recolonization of the thorax with resistant clones (left to right)

Institute life in Manchester

We strive to make our community a welcoming, caring and enthusiastic one, fuelling ambition with opportunities for training and mentoring to help us all achieve our personal and professional goals.

“We are so pleased to have received the funding to enable us to test our hypothesis in the lab. If we can create a new medicine that can precisely target a specific type of cell within the tumour, and restore anti-cancer immune responses, this will be a game-changer for oesophageal cancer patients “

Sara Valpione

Former Institute Clinical Fellow and now Clinician in Residence within the CRUK National Biomarker Centre

“My charity bake sales – known as “David’s Great British Bake Off” – are always a hit, home baked products taste so much better than shop bought and are greatly appreciated by staff!”

David Jenkins

Purchasing Officer

“We’ve seen some remarkable responses, with an improvement for some patients within days. This is an early phase trial so there’s a lot more work to do. But the data we have so far is very encouraging and could help many thousands of people in the future”

Tim Somervaille

Senior Group Leader

“It is a pleasure to introduce my team who work to deliver our research goals. We work in a friendly and collaborative environment, supporting each other’s projects.  “

Amaya Virós

CRUK Advanced Clinician Scientist Fellow

Gloved hands filling a stripette white lab coat

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