The success of current treatment depends on how advanced the cancer is when it’s diagnosed, so finding ways to slow down or prevent the growth of melanoma is the key. A Community Trust Grant in 2009 (administered by the OMRF) funded a study being carried out by Dr Roslyn Kemp and the results of her research could lead to vaccine treatments against melanoma in the future.
During infection, an immune response is generated in our bodies to fight the ‘pathogen’ that is causing the disease. At the end of this process, a type of immune cell remain in our bodies called memory T cells and these cells are faster to respond to a re-infection by the same pathogen. Vaccination uses this process by artificially exposing an individual to a weakened form of pathogen and our bodies create the memory T cells, which are present and ready when a real infection occurs, preventing disease. Dr Roslyn Kemp investigated a new vaccine delivery formulation and measured the ability of the vaccine to generate a good immune response and the type of immune cells that were activated. Her work has been recently published and showed that the new vaccine formulation generated a particular type of immune response, which predicted to be protective against melanoma.
So in the future in addition to making sure we ‘slip, slop, slap and wrap’, we could be getting ‘sun jabs’ every summer, just like our flu jabs in the winter.