About Us

InterMEL is an international consortium of 12 centers with the goal to identify features of the tumor within the individual cells of the tumor that are associated with survival in patients with stage II and III melanoma.

Currently, patients are told of their prognosis when diagnosed based solely on their stage of their disease. However, the mortality rate for individuals diagnosed at stages II or III varies widely (13% to 68%), and scientists have little understanding about why some tumors are more aggressive than others. We believe that looking at different genetic features within tumor cells will help us identify which melanomas would be more likely to grow or come back. The identification of these tumor markers associated with mortality could help stratify patients into those with a good prognosis and those with a poor prognosis. This would dramatically improve clinical care and patient outcomes since identifying those with a poor prognosis may allow access to additional therapies that could prevent future melanoma recurrence and, importantly, those with a good prognosis could avoid these often toxic therapies.

Our international consortium of universities and research institutions around the world has collected genetic data and tumor tissue from nine groups of patients with stage II and III melanoma. These total over 1000 patients, half who died from melanoma within five years of diagnosis and half who lived for at least five years.