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TARGETING PRO-SURVIVAL MECHANISMS TOSENSITIZE HUMAN MELANOMA TO IMMUNOTHERAPY

Dr Xu Dong Zhang, University of Newcastle

Melanoma is one of the few cancers that can befought by a patient’s own immune system, though normally this is not enough to defeat the cancer. Researchers have been investigating different ways of boosting this immune response as a treatment for melanoma, allowing the patient to fight off the tumour from within. Collectively, these treatment approaches are called immunotherapy. While immunotherapy has had excellent results in a small number of patients, it unfortunately does not help the majority of those with melanoma. This study aims to understand how those cancer cells are resisting being killed by the immune system even after it is boosted by treatment. If that can be understood, new therapies may be found to overcome the resistance of melanoma to immunotherapy.

The research team of Dr Xu Dong Zhang has previously shown that cells with melanoma have a number of mechanisms they use to stay alive, which play an important role in their resistance to cancer treatment. The team believes that these survival mechanisms also contribute tothe resistance of melanoma cells to immunotherapy. Results from this study will provide much needed new insights into  resistance of melanoma to immunotherapy, and point to new therapeutic approaches against the disease.

THE ROLE OF MELANOMA STEM CELLS IN MELANOMAGENESIS

Dr Nikolas K Haass, Centenary Institute of Cancer Medicine and Cell Immune Imaging - Biology

Melanoma is the most aggressive skin cancer and ishighly resistant to conventional therapy. The prognosis for metastatic melanoma (melanoma that has spread throughout the body) remains dismal, with patients only surviving 6-10 months. There is growing evidence that melanoma stem cells,a particular type of cancer cell able to regenerate indefinitely, may beresponsible for melanoma’s resistance to therapy.

In order to create better therapies for melanoma, there needs to be a better understanding how these melanoma stem cells work,grow, and invade other tissues. The team, led by Dr Nikolas Haass, aims to study these cells, in the hope of finding therapies that specifically target them.

TARGETING p53 ISOFORMS, delta-40p53 AND p53-beta, TO PROMOTE CHEMO-SENSITIVITY IN HUMAN MELANOMA

Dr Xu Dong Zhang, University of Newcastle - Oncology and Immunology Unit, School of Medicine and Public Health

DNA-damaging chemotherapy is used to kill tumour cells; however this process requires a particular protein called p53 to be present in the cancerous cell. Metastatic melanoma, notoriously difficult to kill with any treatment, does not respond to DNA-damaging chemotherapy even though it contains the p53 protein. This suggests that the p53 inside those cells isn’t functioning properly. This study will look at different variants to the p53 protein to discover what role they play in regulating the response to chemotherapy. This will allow for more tailored treatment outcomes, as well as the possibility for better treatments.