Improving Biomarker Identification for Melanoma Immunotherapy Using Ribonucleic Acid (RNA) Analysis

Melanoma is an aggressive form of skin cancer that can spread quickly; every year more than 150 000 people worldwide are diagnosed with it. Doctors now use medicines called immune-checkpoint blockade (ICB) therapy—drugs that take the “brakes” off the body’s own defenses so immune cells can attack the cancer. These medicines have saved many lives, yet a large share of patients still do not improve, and today no one can say in advance who will or will not benefit.

To solve this problem, we are looking for biomarkers—easy-to-measure signals in blood or tissue that reveal what is happening inside the body. Our team has already found several tumor-secreted factors (tiny chemicals the tumor releases to help itself grow). We now want to study these factors in depth from a transcriptomic view, which means reading the short “messages” sent out by every gene to see which genes are switched on or off.

We will collect large, publicly available databases that hold gene information from many melanoma patients, some who responded to ICB therapy and some who did not. With computer programs and statistics, we will compare the gene messages of the two groups and look for the tumor-secreted factors that best predict success or failure of treatment.

If we confirm reliable biomarkers, doctors will be able to choose the right therapy for each patient from the very start, giving more people a better chance to beat melanoma while avoiding unnecessary side-effects.