Husna, Amity University Kolkata
Melanoma is the most serious type of skin cancer that occurs when the pigment-producing cells that give color to the skin become cancerous. Once it spreads, the disease is known as metastatic melanoma which generally occurs during stage III or stage IV.
Metastatic melanoma is a very fatal disease and as per the the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare 1,375 Australians died from it in 2020.
Almost all patients are treated with immunotherapy as a standard frontline treatment but some patients undergo surgery as well. Immunotherapies are preferred for metastatic melanoma because they have remarkably improved treatment and survival rates but a significant drawback is that more than half of the patients do not respond to it.
A team of researchers from Australia has discovered a prototype test that can help to identify whether the patients suffering from deadly metastasized melanoma are likely to benefit from immunotherapy treatment. Details of the test have been published in the journal clinical cancer research. This prototype test detects the level of LC3B on cancerous cells and it was found that 95% of patients with high levels of LC3B showed better responses to the immunotherapy treatment as compared to 60% of patients with low LC3B levels.
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