Jessie Villanueva, PhD

Melanoma is the deadliest type of skin cancer, and cases continue to rise. New treatments, especially drugs that turn on the immune system, have helped many patients. Still, nearly half of patients do not respond. Even when treatment works at first, the tumors often come back.Our research focuses on melanoma with mutations in the NRAS gene, which is found in about one-third of patients. Until recently, there were few treatments for these tumors. New drugs that target this faulty gene work, but a small number of cancer cells survive. We are studying why these cells survive and how to eradicate them.We have found an “Achilles’ heel” in the surviving cells. We also noticed that these cells change in ways that make them more visible to the immune system. To study them, we use laboratory models that mimic patient tumors. In these models, we follow the cells that escape treatment and study how they stay alive. We then test combinations of drugs already used in patients to see how well they can kill the resistant cells and stop the tumors from coming back.Our goal is to make targeted therapy and immunotherapy work better. We also want to make treatments either fully remove tumors or keep them away for as long as possible. By going after the cells that survive treatment, we hope to improve outcomes for people with melanoma. Although we focus on melanoma, some of our findings could also help improve treatment for other types of cancer.