Mitchell Fane, PhD

Melanoma is the deadliest type of skin cancer because it can spread from the skin to organs like the lungs and liver. This spreading, called metastasis, can cause organ failure and is the main reason people die from melanoma. Some melanoma cells can hide in these organs in a quiet or dormant state for decades. While dormant, the cancer is not growing and cannot be found or treated. Later, these hidden cells can wake up, grow quickly, and form deadly tumors. Current treatments, including immunotherapy (which helps the body’s immune system fight cancer), often fail once melanoma returns.Most research uses young mice to study how melanoma spreads and to test treatments. But melanoma mostly affects older adults. The average age of diagnosis is 65 years-old. This mismatch means many treatments may not reflect how melanoma acts in older patients, which makes up most of the melanoma cases.Our research shows that age plays a key role in melanoma spreading. In young mice, melanoma cells that reach the lungs and liver often stay dormant. In older mice, the same cells wake up and form aggressive tumors. We show that this happens because the immune system gets weaker with age. We found that aging raises certain proteins that block the immune system from stopping cancer. Increasing these proteins in young mice causes cells to wake up and promotes aggressive cancer.This project will test if blocking these proteins can stop melanoma from coming back, spreading, and help current treatments work better.