Dr Lauren Aoude

University of Queensland

Melanoma has a profound effect on the lives of many Australians. While treatments for this disease have evolved rapidly in the past 7 years, there is still a large gap in knowledge regarding who will respond to these new therapies. This problem forms the basis for this PdCCRS Young Investigator project, as better prediction of treatment outcome will allow patients to receive the most appropriate type and timing of care, rather than subjecting patients to expensive drug schedules with serious side effects. This project combines deep whole-exome sequencing of tumours with routine PET/CT imaging to confirm an association between clinical presentation, tumour genomic heterogeneity and PET/CT scans in melanoma patients.