Delivering Therapeutic Radiation to Melanoma Tumours

Start year: 2025

Summary: Melanoma is the third most common cancer in Australia. In those patients not curable by surgery, approximately half with the common forms of melanoma and most with the rarer sub-types of the disease will not respond to current treatments. Also, development of acquired treatment resistance plagues long-term survival of initially responsive patients. The applicant has developed a small molecule that non-invasively detects dying and dead tumour cells with very high specificity and sensitivity, called Cell Death Indicator or CDI. CDI targets the loss of plasma membrane integrity phenotype that is common to apoptotic and necrotic forms of cell death. CDI was labelled with gallium-68 (68Ga) for positron emission tomography imaging and has been demonstrated to have excellent tumour imaging and dosimetry characteristics in cancer patients. I hypothesise that replacement of the imaging isotope, 68Ga, in CDI with the therapeutic isotope, lead-212 (212Pb), will deliver killing radiation to viable melanoma tumour cells neighbouring the apoptotic and necrotic cells. 212Pb-CDI is predicted to generate a self-amplifying cascade of melanoma cell kill and so might overcome the problems of treatment resistance and residual disease in melanomas not curable by surgery.

Acknowledgement of Country

UTS acknowledges the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, the Boorooberongal people of the Dharug Nation, the Bidiagal people and the Gamaygal people, upon whose ancestral lands our university stands. We would also like to pay respect to the Elders both past and present, acknowledging them as the traditional custodians of knowledge for these lands.