Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Assessment Of The Clinical Validity Of Ctdna Analysis For Melanoma Management, Anda-Gabriela Marsavela

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Metastatic melanoma is responsible for almost 80% of all skin cancer-related deaths and the incidence of people affected continues to rise worldwide. The emergence of targeted therapy and immune-checkpoint inhibitors has improved the clinical management of melanoma, but durable survival benefit is only seen in a minority of patients. The use of these very expensive systemic therapies on all appropriate patients also poses a high economic burden on health systems across numerous countries. Currently, surveillance for treatment failure is not optimal. Thus, reliable and accurate biomarkers of patient disease status are urgently required.

Circulating tumour DNA (ctDNA) analysis has emerged …

Unravelling The Potential Applications Of Extracellular Vesicles For The Clinical Management Of Melanoma Patients, Michael Edward Clark

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Metastatic melanoma is the third most common cancer in Australia with global incidence increasing. After decades without effective systemic treatments for advanced melanoma, the advent of targeted and immune therapies has substantially improved patient survival. While this is encouraging, further research is needed as the majority of patients treated with targeted therapy ultimately develop drug resistance. Immunotherapy can achieve durable responses in many patients however, not all patients respond to current single or a combination of immune checkpoint inhibitors. Considering the cost and potential toxicities to patients being treated with these therapies, there is an urgent need to develop biomarkers …