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7^th International Congress of the Society for Melanoma Research

Program now available

The Society for Melanoma Research (SMR) is a diverse organisation of scientific and medical investigators devoted to alleviating the suffering of people with melanoma. The SMR was founded to unify the field by increasing communication among researchers and building bridges of collaboration between basic, translational, and clinical investigators. The 7th International Melanoma Research Congress offers a critical opportunity for researchers and clinicians to come together to focus on melanoma biology and treatment.

Invited Speakers

We are pleased to announce that the following invited speakers will be presenting at Melanoma 2010:

• Adam Hurlstone (United Kingdom) - Biography
  
  Dr Adam Hurlstone is a lecturer at the University of Manchester, UK. His group has pioneered the use of zebrafish to dissect the contribution of Ras down-stream signalling pathways to melanoma initiation and progression. The group are now identifying and validating other determinants of malignant progression using this system. Prior to this, Adam was a post-doctoral research associate with Hans Clevers in Utrecht, The Netherlands where he applied a novel reverse genetics strategy to knock-out an important tumour suppressor, Apc, in zebrafish. Adam performed his doctoral training at the Cancer Research UK Beatson Institute, Glasgow, UK, where he participated in the identification of a novel tumour suppressor gene TESS, and received his bachelor degree in Natural Sciences from the University of Cambridge, UK.
• Alexander Boiko (United States of America)
• Andrew Aplin (United States of America)
• Antoni Ribas (United States of America) - Biography
  
  Antoni Ribas, M.D. is Associate Professor of Medicine and Surgery at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA). He was trained at the University of Barcelona, Spain, with postdoctoral research and clinical fellowship at UCLA. He is the Director of the Tumor Immunology Program at the Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center (JCCC), a permanent committee member of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) grant review panels and an elected member of the American Society of Clinical Investigation (ASCI). Dr. Ribas is a physician-scientist conducting laboratory and clinical research focused in malignant melanoma, including adoptive cell transfer with T cell receptor (TCR) engineered lymphocytes, anti-CTLA4 antibodies, targeted therapies for melanoma oncogenes and nanoparticle-siRNA..
• Ashani Weeraratna (United States of America)
• Brian Gabrielli (Australia)
• Colin Goding (United Kingdom) - Biography
  
  Colin Goding completed a PhD in virology at the National Institute for Medical Research, London, UK. He then moved as a Post-doc to Pierre Chambon’s lab in Strasbourg, France, where he developed his interest in transcription regulation, before taking up a position at the Marie Curie Research Institute, Oxted, UK to continue working on gene regulation, both in S. cerevisiae, as well as in melanocytes and melanoma. In 2008 he moved to the Ludwig Institute, University of Oxford, UK where he continues to examine the role of signaling and transcription in melanoma biology.
• David Fisher (United States of America) - Biography
  
  David E. Fisher, MD, PhD is chief of the Massachusetts General Hospital Department of Dermatology at Harvard Medical School. He also serves as director of the MGH Cutaneous Biology Research Center and director of the Melanoma Center at MGH. Fisher’s research has focused on understanding the molecular and genetic events which underlie formation of melanoma as well as skin pigmentation. As a clinician, he has worked to translate these understandings into advances in diagnosis, treatment and prevention of human diseases related to the skin and associated disorders. A graduate of Swarthmore College with a degree in Biology and Chemistry, Fisher is also a concert cellist and received a degree from the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. Fisher’s specialty training in Medicine, Pediatrics, and Oncology were carried out at Harvard Medical School.
• Elizabeth Patton (United Kingdom)
• Glenn Merlino (United States of America) - Biography
  
  Dr. Glenn Merlino’s career research contributions include the areas of receptor tyrosine kinase signaling, oncogenic transformation, transcriptional regulation, cell cycle regulation, multiple drug resistance and genomic instability. Dr. Merlino was the first to report the amplification/rearrangement of the EGFR gene in human cancer and was among the first to show that growth factors could function in vivo as oncogenes using transgenic mouse models. Currently, Dr. Merlino and his colleagues in the Cancer Modeling Section are seeking to elucidate the complex molecular/genetic programs governing melanoma genesis and progression through development and analysis of GEM models of human cancer. Using a novel mouse melanoma model, Dr. Merlino provided the first experimental evidence supporting the notion that childhood sunburn is a critical melanoma risk factor. This model is being used to identify the molecular wiring of melanoma initiation by UV radiation, and to access the relative risks of exposure to UVA and UVB in sunlight. A translational goal is to use GEM models for preclinical studies aimed at studying residual metastatic disease and its resistance to therapeutics.
• Grant McArthur (Australia) - Biography
  Associate Professor Grant McArthur is Head of the Medical Oncology Skin and Melanoma Clinical Service at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Melbourne Australia.  He is a Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians and holds a PhD in Medical Biology. He also is currently Head of Molecular Oncology and Translational Research Laboratories and Head of the Cancer Therapeutics Program at Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre.   In 2004 he was awarded the Translational Research Award of the Fondation Nelia et Amadeo Barletta and in 2005 he was awarded the Sir Edward Dunlop Clinical Cancer Research Fellowship of the Cancer Council of Victoria.  He is national and international study co-chair of a number of clinical trials and chapter leader on multidisciplanary care in the 2008 national Guidelines for the Management of Melanoma.  He has extensive experience in communicating issues on the management and prevention of melanoma to lay audiences.
• Helen Rizos (Australia) - Biography
  Dr Helen Rizos joined the Westmead Melanoma Research group in 1995, working on melanoma predisposition genes and the functional analysis of melanoma-associated p16^INK4a and p14ARF variants. She received a NHMRC Fellowship in 2003 and began her own research team at the Westmead Institute for Cancer Research. Her research focus continues to include the functional characterization of melanoma-associated tumour suppressor proteins and oncogenes. Her group is also involved in dissecting the physiological role and effectors of oncogene-induced senescence. Dr Rizos currently holds a NSW Cancer Institute Fellowship.
• Jeffrey Sosman (United States of America) - Biography
  Dr. Sosman's interests center on the targeted therapy of melanoma and renal cancer He has been an active and well-recognized clinical investigator vested in the immune-based therapy of melanoma over the years. Dr. Sosman leads the Vanderbilt Melanoma Program, one of the first programs in the nation to offer melanoma patients routine genotyping of their tumors to help identify and treat based on their genetic mutations. He has been an active researcher and physician putting him among a small group of individuals who can drive science developments in this field into treatments potentially impacting on patient care.
  
  He has been an active researcher and physician putting him among a small group of individuals who can drive science developments in this field into treatments potentially impacting on patient care.
• Jonathan Dry (United Kingdom) - Biography
  Jonathan completed a BSc (hons) in Biomedical Science at the University of Manchester and an MSc in Bioinformatics at the University of Exeter. His academic research projects focused towards the genetics of diabetes and, in collaboration with GlaxoSmithKline, machine learning to model protease sequence recognition motifs. In 2003 Jonathan joined the newly formed Oncology Bioinformatics team at AstraZeneca UK where he now holds the position of Senior Bioinformatics Scientist, leading support to translational science projects and statistical / informatics analysis of gene expression. His research has improved understanding of pathway/drug target dependency and led to biomarker identification influencing clinical and personalised healthcare strategy for a number of core AstraZeneca projects, including the MEK inhibitor selumetinib (AZD6244). Through these projects Jonathan has worked with a number of academic collaborators and key opinion leaders in oncology and Bioinformatics.
• Keiran Smalley (United States of America) - Biography
  
  Dr Smalley received his PhD in Molecular Pharmacology from the University of Cambridge in 2001. After working as a post-doc in the lab of Chris Marshall at the Institute of Cancer Research in London he moved to the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia, where he spent 5 years working under the guidance of Dr Meenhard Herlyn. Dr Smalley is currently an Assistant Professor and a member of the Comprehensive Melanoma Research Center at the Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, FL.
  
  
  
  
• Keith Flaherty (United States of America) - Biography
  
  Dr. Flaherty is a medical oncologist with a focus on clinical and translational research involving therapeutics in early development. He graduated from Johns Hopkins medical school, completed residency in internal medicine at Brigham & Women's Hospital, and fellowship in medical oncology at the University of Pennsylvania, where he remained on faculty for 7 years. In 2009 he moved to the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center to lead the Developmental Therapeutics Program. Dr. Flaherty has been the recipient of K12, K23, RO1 and SPORE project grants from the NIH/NCI. He has been the principal investigator of numerous first-in-human trials with targeted therapies relevant to melanoma.
• Kevin Brown (United States of America) - Biography
  
  Dr. Brown received his PhD in Genetics from the George Washington University in 2003. He has spent his last seven years at the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) in Phoenix, Arizona, first as a post-doctoral fellow in the lab of Jeff Trent and subsequently developing an independent research program as a member of the faculty. Dr. Brown's research is largely focused on the identification and characterization of genes predisposing to melanoma development in melanoma families as well as the general population.
• Marcus Bosenberg (United States of America) - Biography
  Marcus Bosenberg, MD, PhD is an Associate Professor of Dermatology and Pathology at Yale University. He directs as basic and translational melanoma research laboratory that focuses on the biology of melanoma metastasis by utilizing novel mouse models of melanoma. Additional interests include melanoma cancer stem cells, the role of epigenetic changes in melanoma progression, characterization of the functional interaction of genetic changes in melanoma, the immunobiology of melanoma, and development of combination therapies for melanoma. He completed medical and graduate education at Cornell University and his clinical training in pathology at Harvard Medical School. He maintains a clinical practice as a dermatopathologist.
• Marisol Soengas (United States of America)
• Mark Middleton (United Kingdom) - Biography
  Mark Middleton is Professor of Experimental Cancer Medicine and a Medical Oncologist at the University of Oxford. He trained at the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford and his oncological fellowship was at the Christie Hospital and the Paterson Institute for Cancer Research, Manchester. Dr Middleton's clinical research has concentrated on modulating resistance to cytotoxics through inhibition of DNA repair, specifically O6-Methylguanine-DNA Methyltransferase and Poly(ADP)ribose polymerase. Current work focuses on the potential for signal transduction inhibitors to modulate DNA repair and on the ability of agents affecting chromatin to potentiate cytotoxic chemotherapy.
• Mark Shackleton (Australia) - Biography
  Dr. Mark Shackleton is a Medical Oncologist and Group Leader of the Melanoma Research Laboratory at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre. After training in medical oncology in Melbourne and with the Melanoma Unit at the Ludwig Institute, Dr. Shackleton did his PhD at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute. He then went to the University of Michigan to test the cancer stem cell model in human melanoma. There he developed a highly efficient in vivo tumorigenesis assay that enables evaluation of human melanoma at the clonal level. His laboratory at Peter Mac focuses on understanding mechanisms of melanoma initiation and propagation.
• Masashi Kato (Japan) - Biography
  
  Professional Experience
  Apr. 2000 to Sep. 2000
  Associate Professor, Nagoya University Graduate School of Medicine, Nagoya, Japan.
  
  July 2000 to Jun. 2003
  Visiting Professor, Dartmouth Medical School, Hanover, NH, USA.
  
  July 2003 to Sep. 2004
  Associate Professor, Kanazawa University, Japan.
  
  Oct. 2004 to Present
  Professor, Chubu University, Japan.
  
  Degrees
  MD: Mar. 1988 (Fukui Medical School)
  PhD: Mar. 1995 (Nagoya University)
  
  Honors and Awards
  1. 2002   Yasue prize (Fields of Oriental Medicine and Skin Biology)
  2. 2003   Award for the Kao Foundation for Arts and Scientist (Fields of Skin Biology)
  3. 2006   Award for Young Scientist from the Japanese Society for Hygiene 4. 2008   ROHTO Award from the Japanese Society for geriatric Dermatology
• Meenhard Herlyn (United States of America)
• Neal Rosen (United States of America)
• Neil Box
• Nick Hayward (Australia) - Biography
  Nicholas K. Hayward PhD Senior Principal Research Fellow and Head, Oncogenomics Laboratory, Queensland Institute of Medical Research, Brisbane, Australia.
  
  I have studied the molecular genetics of melanoma for more than 20 years and am a foundation member of the International Melanoma Genetics Consortium (GenoMEL) and the Society for Melanoma Research (SMR). My work focuses on identifying high and low penetrance melanoma predisposition genes through linkage and association analyses, positional cloning and candidate gene studies, as well as whole-genome and exome sequencing. Additionally, a large part of my research program involves identification and characterization of somatic mutations or gene expression differences associated with melanoma development and progression.
• Nikolas Haass (Australia) - Biography
  
  Dr Haass was trained at University of Heidelberg Medical School, Germany, (MD) and graduated summa cum laude with a PhD in Cell Biology at the German Cancer Research Centre, where he cloned a novel gene, pantophysin, characterized its function and role in embryonal development. This work resulted in high-impact publications and was honored by the American Society for Cell Biology with the Worthington-Award. During his clinical dermatology training at the University of Hamburg, Germany, he specialized in dermatological oncology and surgery and participated in multi-centre trials for melanoma therapy. His research on cell communication in melanoma was honored with the "Award for Outstanding Work of Young Researchers in Dermatology" and resulted in further publications. As a German-Research-Foundation-funded postdoctoral fellow in Professor Herlyn's laboratory at the Wistar Institute, Philadelphia, Dr Haass contributed to the understanding of interactions of melanoma with its microenvironment and of signaling pathways in melanoma, particularly with regards to targeted therapies. Together with Dr Smalley, he developed a novel 3D-spheroid melanoma model. Since 10/2007, Dr Haass has been a Senior Lecturer at the University of Sydney and a Cameron Melanoma Research Fellow in Professor Weninger's laboratory at the Centenary Institute, Sydney, where Dr Haass' group focuses on real-time imaging of melanoma cells in 3D culture and in vivo. His special interests are subpopulations of melanoma cells and their response to therapy.
• Peter Hersey  (Australia) - Biography
  
  Professor Hersey is a graduate in medicine from the University of Adelaide and in science from the University of Oxford where he completed a D.Phil in tumor immunology . He has worked closely with the Sydney and Newcastle melanoma units on Immunological aspects of melanoma and has been the principal investigator for a large randomized trial of immunotherapy in Stage 11b,111 melanoma and several smaller trials of dendritic cell vaccines. He is Conjoint Professor of Oncology at the University of Newcastle, Research Director of the Newcastle Melanoma Unit and Consultant Immunologist to the Melanoma Institute Australia. He is a Member of the International working group on Melanoma and the Global melanoma task force. He has contributed extensively to studies on sensitivity of melanoma cells to apoptosis induced by the immune system and chemotherapy and treatments which sensitize melanoma to therapy..He holds the view that overcoming resistance to cell death pathways in melanoma holds the key to advances in treatment of melanoma. He is joint holder of a National Health and Medical Research Council Program grant for studies on melanoma. He is on the editorial board of a number of international journals and has contributed extensively to melanoma research. Dr Hersey is author of over 260 papers on original research related to melanoma..
• Reinhard Dummer (Switzerland) - Biography
  
  Reinhard Dummer started his medical education in haematology and oncology before he did his dermatology residency in Würzburg and Zürich. He is both board certified in dermatology and allergology and clinical immunology and has a board certification in dermatopatholoy. His principal research interest is in the molecular biology and immunotherapy of cutaneous malignancies. He has intensively investigated epithelial skin cancers, cutaneous lymphomas and melanomas. His impressive publication list includes more than 300 original articles. His cumulative impact factor is over 1’700 and is a key opionion leader in cutaneous oncology world-wide.
  
  Reinhard Dummer is past president of the International Society for Cutaneous Lymphomas, board member of the European Association for Dermatological Oncology and past president for the European Society for Dermatological Research, president of the melanoma group of the SAKK and president of the skin cancer prevention commission of the Swiss cancer league.
• Richard Kefford (Australia) - Biography
  
  Richard Kefford AM MB BS PhD FRACP is Professor of Medicine at the University of Sydney, Westmead Hospital. He is Director of the Westmead Institute for Cancer Research, and Co-Director of Research at the Melanoma Institute of Australia (MIA), incorporating Sydney Melanoma Unit. He is Chief Investigator on an NHMRC Program Grant researching the molecular biology of melanoma, with particular focus on regulation of senescence and emergence of resistance to MAPK inhibitors. He has been an investigator on over 30 Clinical Trials in melanoma and leads MIA’s involvement in a number of Phase I, II , III  and adjuvant trials of targeted anti-melanoma drugs. He is consultant to a number of biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies.
• Richard Marais
• Ruth Halaban (United States of America) - Biography
  Ruth Halaban, PhD is a Professor/Senior Research Scientist in the Department of Dermatology at Yale University School of Medicine. She is a graduate of the Hebrew University in Israel and Princeton University in the USA. She is currently the Director of the Yale SPORE in Skin Cancer, a multidisciplinary translational program supported by the NCI set in the Medical School and Yale Cancer Center. The program includes melanoma immunology and immunotherapy, serum and tumor markers, genetic and epigenetic aberrations, activated kinases and targeted therapy, and hereditary factors in skin cancer. Her research interests have been in the fields of molecular biology of pigmentation, growth factors and receptor, the progression of normal melanocytes to melanomas, aberrant epigenetic changes in DNA methylation, gene expression, signal transduction, receptor and non-receptor kinases. More recently she has ventured into deep sequencing of melanomas coding regions to discover novel mutations in tumor suppressors and oncogenes that can drive the malignant process.
• Thomas Tueting (Germany) - Biography
  
  Thomas Tüting, M.D., born 31.1962, studied Medicine at the University of Frankfurt, Germany (1981-1987). After a service as Medical officer in the German Airforce (1988-1991) he completed his residency in clinical dermatology (1991-1995). He was trained in tumor immunology and gene therapy at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine (1995-1997), worked as a clinical instructor and research associate in the Dept. of Dermatology at the University of Mainz (1988-2001) and is now Associate Professor for Experimental Dermatology at the University of Bonn (since 2001). In his research he investigates the role of the immune system in the pathogenesis and treatment of melanoma using novel genetically engineered mouse tumor models.
• Tim Bishop
• Tobias Schatton (United States of America) - Biography
  
  Dr. Tobias Schatton is a Pharm.D. graduate of the University of Frankfurt, Germany. He earned his Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of Würzburg, Germany, based on research conducted during a Postdoctoral Fellowship at Harvard Medical School under the mentorship of Dr. Markus Frank. Dr. Schatton's laboratory research focuses on mechanistically dissecting how melanoma stem cells impact melanomagenesis, neoplastic progression, and cancer therapeutic resistance, with an emphasis on the immunomodulatory and immunoevasive properties of this novel tumor subpopulation. Dr. Schatton is currently an Instructor in Dermatology at Harvard Medical School and a faculty member of the Department of Dermatology at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, MA.
  
• William Harbour (United States of America) - Biography
  
  J. William Harbour, MD, received his medical degree from Johns Hopkins in 1990, followed by residency at the Wills Eye Hospital in Philadelphia, Vitreoretinal Diseases fellowship at Bascom Palmer Eye Institute in Miami, and Ocular Oncology fellowship at University of California, San Francisco. He obtained research training at the National Cancer Institute and in the Division of Molecular Oncology at Washington University. He is presently Director of Ocular Oncology at Washington University School of Medicine and the Siteman Cancer Center in St. Louis, and he oversees an active research program focusing on the genetics and genomics of ocular melanoma.
  
• Xu Dong Zhang (Australia) - Biography
  
  Dr Xu Dong Zhang received his PhD from the University of Sydney in 2001, and has since been working on translational research on melanoma with an overall theme of overcoming resistance of metastatic melanoma to treatment and a particular focus on understanding resistance mechanisms of melanoma cells to induction of apoptosis.   He has been examining regulation of TRAIL-induced apoptosis in melanoma, and more recently, has developed a strong interest in examination of adaptive mechanisms of melanoma cells to endoplasmic reticulum stress. Dr Zhang is a Cancer Institute NSW Fellow and a conjoint associate professor of the University of Newcastle. 
  
• Yardena Samuels (United States of America) - Biography
  
  Dr. Samuels received her B.Sc. from Cambridge University, UK and her M.Sc. in immunology and cancer research at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. She received her Ph.D. in molecular cancer biology at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, Imperial College, London. Dr. Samuels did her postdoctoral fellowship with Drs. Vogelstein, Kinzler and Velculescu where she discovered that the gene encoding PI3Kalpha is mutated in 32% of colorectal cancer patients as well as in a large fraction of other human cancers, making this one of the most highly mutated oncogenes in human malignancies. As a tenure track researcher in the Cancer Genetics Branch, NHGRI, Dr. Samuels continues to use high-throughput and whole-genome sequencing to identify novel mutations in melanoma. Dr. Samuels' interest is to further elucidate these genetic alterations, to investigate their functional effects in order to apply this information to the clinic.
• Ze’ev Ronai (United States of America)

Scientific Program Committee

• Nicholas Hayward (Convenor)
• Richard Kefford (Co-Convenor)
• Graham Mann (Co-Convenor)
• Diona Damian
• Rod Dunbar
• Nikolas Haass
• Peter Hersey
• Richard Scolyer
• Graham Stevens
• Jonathan Stretch
• John Thompson