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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 …

Circulating Tumour Dna: A Non-Invasive Biomarker For Melanoma, Ashleigh Cavell Mcevoy

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Cutaneous melanoma accounts for 90% of all skin cancer deaths (Balch et al., 2010) and is responsible for 3.6% of deaths from cancer in Australia (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 2016). Whilst early detection and successful surgical removal of primary melanomas have improved survival rates (DeSantis et al., 2014), approximately 30% of these patients will have disease recurrence at some point in their lives (Soong et al., 1992; Soong et al., 1998). This is despite being considered disease free following treatment, which may have included surgical removal of the primary and/or its metastasis/es, radiation and/or systemic therapy. Whilst the …