“A Firestorm of Progress”—The Road from Bench to Bedside

Christine Wilson, cancer survivor, shares her experiences from the Abramson Cancer Center’s 2013- Focus Melanoma and CAN Prevent Skin Cancer Conferences. In this blog, she discusses advances in melanoma research. 


The Wistar Institute is an independent research institution that has made remarkable contributions to science in its long history—especially in the fields of vaccines, cancer, and specifically melanoma. The collaboration between Wistar’s Melanoma Program, directed by Dr. Herlyn and Penn’s outstanding Melanoma Research Progam, along with the clinical team at Penn has lasted more than 25 years and significantly advanced the understanding and treatment of melanoma, and other diseases.

Focus on Melanoma Conference attendees in a session.

Dr. Herlyn’s goal is to understand the exact mechanisms that cause a normal skin cell to become malignant and grow into a melanoma.

“There are still some open questions,” he notes as to which cell in human skin actually undergoes that transformation. Melanomas arise in cells called melanocytes, but there remains some “scientific quirkiness” about which sub-population of these cells produce melanomas, and whether they may be age-related differences in the process. It has recently been demonstrated that older people have populations of pigment producing cells that can revert back to stem cells—or cells that have the potential to differentiate into a completely different kind of cell.

One of Dr. Herlyn’s interests is in understanding how these cells function normally and what their role is in causing melanomas.

What Makes Melanoma Cells Different?

The answers are not easily obtained. Melanoma cells behave very differently than normal cells in many ways.
They can:

• Grow without aging
• Control all the normal cells in their environment
• Invade almost any organ
• Stay hidden for years without growing, remaining dormant
• Produce their own hormones and flourish for years on a diet that would kill a normal cell in a day or two.

Each of these factors poses challenges to researchers seeking better approaches to melanoma diagnosis and treatment. Researchers now know that melanomas are heterogeneous, meaning that all not melanomas are the same, and that not all cells within a melanoma are the same. They are also learning much more about what Herlyn calls “the complex rewiring of resistant tumors,” the process by which melanomas evolve so that they are no longer responsive to previously effective treatments.

As difficult as these problems have proved in the past, Herlyn now believes that “we know the strategies, or we think we do,” and that with the rights kinds of teams and partnerships working on the problem, that “his hope and expectation is that there will be a cure for melanoma within five years—because we know so much more now.”

Penn Medicine's Melanoma and Pigmented Lesion
Program was among the first in the country to provide information,
evaluation, and genetic counseling for those at increased risk for melanoma
and to create a model for melanoma screening.
Learn more about melanoma treatment and care at Penn Medicine.