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MRA Advisor & Grantee Dr. Allison Awarded Nobel Prize for Transforming Cancer Care

MRA Scientific Advisory Panel Member & Grantee Dr. Jim Allison Awarded Nobel Prize for his pioneering research to harness the power of the immune system to attack cancer. His work in immunotherapy, which began in the 1990’s, was audacious at the time. It helped to mainstream an entirely new class of tools in the arsenal against cancer; joining the likes of chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery.

Connecting the Dots: MRA’s 2017-2018 Annual Report

Since its founding in 2007, the Melanoma Research Alliance (MRA) has become the largest non-profit funder of melanoma worldwide. Since 2007, MRA has directly funded more than $101 million in grants and leveraged an additional $101 million from outside sources to support 266 research projects.

These investments are unparalleled and have helped to transform the landscape for patients and their families.

Read the Report

Improving the Lives of Melanoma Survivors

Melanoma survivors are at a 9-fold increased risk of developing another melanoma. Fortunately, in Dr. Rachel Vogel’s previous research, she found that most melanoma survivors adopt vigilant sun safe behaviors to mitigate this increased risk. Unfortunately, while most survivors adopt safer behaviors, 20% of survivors reported a sunburn in the past year and 10% intentionally went outside for a tan – both strong predictors of inappropriate sun exposure. She hopes to disrupt this cycle and to help melanoma survivors live better.

Older Patients Do Better on Immunotherapy

Many try to ignore it, some fight it, and others embrace it, but whatever your strategy – aging is an inescapable fact of life. We get wrinkles and lose muscle mass, cognition starts to decline, and our hair starts to grey or fall out – aging marks all of us in ways both visible and not. Dr. Ashani T. Weeraratna was shocked to discover that older melanoma patients had better outcomes than their younger counterparts when treated with immunotherapy.