Proof of Concept 2024 Winner to improve Advanced Melanoma Therapy
New Zealand has one of the highest melanoma incidence rates in the world with about 13 people being diagnosed every day. Melanoma can progress quickly and spread beyond skin. Then, it can be difficult to treat. Over 300 New Zealanders die of melanoma every year. This year’s Proof of Concept winner discovered molecules that may improve the treatment of advanced melanoma, hopefully reducing fatalities in the future. The winning team receive $100,000 from Otago Innovation towards their research to prove the concept of targeted melanoma therapy.
Professor Mark Hampton’s team at the Department of Pathology and Biomedical Science, University of Otago Christchurch is embedded in the Centre for Redox Biology and Medicine. Initially suspecting a botched experiment leading to cell death, the team realised it might have discovered a new mechanism to sensitise treatment-resistant cancer cells to existing therapies.
“We modified the expression of a protein for fundamental investigations of redox biology in cells. The detrimental effects on cell viability impeded those efforts. But it opened this new line of research!”
Melanoma treatment varies depending on the stage of melanoma, where it has spread to, on the specific make-up of the melanoma cells in an individual and on what the clinical team believes will work best for the individual patient.
“Melanoma is one of many cancers in which targeted therapeutics are used. All have problems of acquired resistance”, says Professor Hampton.
Whilst the development of immunotherapies for melanoma have increased the five-year survival rate of patients with advanced melanoma from 10% to 50%, most melanoma patients do not respond to immunotherapy such as PD-L1 inhibitors and face difficult times.
Targeted drugs can be very helpful in treating advanced melanomas when the cancer cells have certain gene changes. About half of all melanomas have mutations in the BRAF gene and the altered BRAF protein helps them grow. Targeted melanoma therapy are drugs targeting BRAF protein (BRAF inhibitors) or the related MEK proteins (MEK inhibitors) alongside others such as CTLA-4 or inhibition of Lymphocyte Activation Gene3 (LAG3).
To overcome resistance, often a combination of drugs with different mechanisms of action or targets is given. As a result, USD3.325 billion are spent annually on immunotherapy (incl. PD-L1 inhibitors), USD1.374 billion on targeted therapy (incl. BRAF inhibitors), and USD0.543 billion on chemotherapy to treat melanoma globally (2023). Despite all progress to date, about 60,000 patients die from melanoma every year worldwide.
Otago Innovation’s milestones tranched investment of $100,000 will advance the research team’s planned in vitro and in vivo experiments. “In parallel, Otago Innovation will invest into the securing of intellectual property and navigating freedom-to-operate, as well as identifying the best path to market. There is certainly a compelling need for Mark’s research”, says Otago Innovation’s CEO David Christensen.