Funded by the Stuart Scott Memorial Cancer Research Fund
New cancer drugs that help the immune system have improved survival for many people with melanoma. But they often do not work well for acral melanoma, a type of skin cancer that grows on the palms, soles, and under the nails. Acral melanoma is the most common type of melanoma in Black, Asian, and Hispanic patients. Patients with this cancer also tend to do worse after immune treatment than patients with other forms of melanoma.Our team studied tumors from patients with acral melanoma to learn why this happens. We found that a protein called BRD4 may be important. BRD4 comes in two forms. One form helps turn on signals that allow the immune system to see and attack cancer. The other form may help cancer cells survive.In acral melanoma, a change in the BRD4 gene may reduce the helpful form and increase the harmful form. When this happens, immune cells may have a harder time finding and killing the cancer, even during treatment.Drugs that block BRD4 already exist, but they block both forms at once. This may be one reason they have not worked well. Our project will study what each form does, where it is found in the tumor, and how it affects nearby immune cells. We will then test whether blocking the harmful form while keeping the helpful form can make immunotherapy work better.
