How Incurable Melanoma Resists Treatment

Source: Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News, April 2023

Researchers say they have found out how some skin cancers stop responding to treatment at the end of life. An analysis of 14 patients who died from incurable melanoma has revealed that changes to the order, structure, and number of copies of tumor DNA could cause some skin cancers to resist treatment. These changes also explain how melanoma can spread to other parts of the body.

The study “Late-stage metastatic melanoma emerges through a diversity of evolutionary pathways,” published in Cancer Discovery, was led by scientists and clinicians at the Francis Crick Institute, University College London (UCL), and The Royal Marsden.

“Understanding the evolutionary pathways to metastasis and resistance to immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICI) in melanoma is critical for improving outcomes. Here we present the most comprehensive intra-patient metastatic melanoma dataset assembled to date as part of the PEACE research autopsy program, including 222 exome, 493 panel-sequenced, 161 RNA-seq, and 22 single-cell whole-genome sequencing samples from 14 ICI-treated patients,” write the investigators.
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