Professor Shahneen Sandhu awarded $5 million grant to enhance melanoma treatment
02 October 2024
Professor Shahneen Sandhu has been awarded a substantial $5 million National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Synergy Grant for a pioneering research project aimed at revolutionising our understanding of melanoma treatment.
Australia and New Zealand lead the world with the highest melanoma rates, with over 1,300 deaths annually. A class of drugs known as combination immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) have significantly reduced mortality rates, but around 50 per cent of patients still succumb to the disease.
In addition, some patients experience severe immune-related adverse events (irAEs) from these treatments. The challenge lies in understanding why ICIs benefit some patients while causing adverse effects in others. Professor Sandhu and her multidisciplinary team which includes University of Melbourne’s Professor Sammy Bedoui and Dr Vanessa Marcelino, Professor Tony Papenfuss from WEHI, and Peter Mac’s Dr Lavina Spain and Professor Grant McArthur, aim to address these critical gaps in cancer treatment.
The research focuses on the role of compounds produced by gut bacteria called microbiota-derived metabolites (MDMs) in melanoma therapy. Professor Sandhu said that instead of looking at specific bacterial species in the microbiome, the team will investigate how MDMs affect melanoma-specific immune responses.
“We have assembled a team of immunologists, microbial ecologists, computational biologists, and melanoma clinicians with diverse expertise to address these questions using advanced integrative analyses in mouse models and prospective melanoma patient datasets,” she said.
“Collectively, our research will provide new insights into how the microbial metabolites regulate immune responses against melanoma and to identify new ways to treat melanoma patients and so improve their outcomes.”
The findings could lead to new therapeutic strategies and biomarkers that enhance the efficacy of current treatments and reduce adverse effects.
In addition, Professor Jayesh Desai and Professor Jeanne Tie are collaborating on a NHMRC Synergy Grant led by John Mariadason at the ONJCR that focuses on RAF and RAS mutant colorectal cancer. They will bring in resources to lead much of the translational and clinical trial components of this research.
“This grant is a fantastic cross-organisational collaboration which will really enable us to make an impact on crucial outcomes for patients even further.
The NHMRC Synergy Grants support outstanding multidisciplinary teams of investigators to work together to answer major questions that cannot be answered by a single investigator.
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