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Melanoma Starts Evading Treatment Within Hours – Here’s How to Stop It

By March 31, 2025No Comments

Drs. Wei Wei and Jim Heath, co-corresponding authors of a paper in Cell Systems, describe their findings on how melanoma cells can evade cancer drugs shortly after treatment and how combination therapy can improve outcomes.

Researchers have uncovered a stealth survival strategy that melanoma cells use to evade targeted therapy, offering a promising new approach to improving treatment outcomes.

The study, published in Cell Systems and conducted by researchers at the Institute for Systems Biology (ISB) and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) identifies a non-genetic, reversible adaptation mechanism that allows melanoma cells to survive treatment with BRAF inhibitors. By identifying and blocking this early response, researchers proposed a combination therapy that could delay resistance and enhance the effectiveness of existing treatments.