The Melanoma Working Group is a team of expert doctors and researchers; its primary purpose is to identify biomarkers to predict therapeutic response to prevent patients from undergoing ineffective treatments and experiencing unpleasant side effects.

The team is coordinated by Giandomenico Russo, director of the Molecular Oncology Laboratory at the Immacolata Dermal Institute (IDI) in Rome, one of the leading European centres for skincare and where the WG’s laboratories and operational secretariat are located.

The Melanoma WG can count on the synergy generated with fifteen other IRCCS that, united in the network, have access to a third of the new cases/year in Italy (about 4,000) and 1,300 patients already in therapy.

The starting point for the work of the Melanoma WG is the characterization of genomic alterations of tumours in the current clinical routine: only a few genes – out of the hundreds altered – are commonly analyzed, and not all patients have access to these analyses. The use of new generation technologies (Next Generation Sequencing, NGS) enables the WG to perform rapid, cost-effective and large-scale sequencing of the genome to identify the best therapeutic strategy for each patient– which is very useful for the selection of the most appropriate therapy for each patient.

The clinical coordinator Paolo Ascierto from the Pascale Institute in Naples, and the preclinical coordinator Licia Rivoltini from the National Tumour Institute in Milan, both national and international points of reference on the subject, also contributed to the work.