INTRODUCTION

A New Era of Advancement

When MRA was launched 15 years ago, few could have imagined the catalytic effect it would have in both the melanoma and cancer research spaces. At that time, there was little by way of treatment options for patients with advanced melanoma, the field was all but stagnant, funding was difficult to come by, and most individuals with advanced disease died.

Despite the obvious obstacles, MRA boldly stated from day one its mission to cure melanoma. The organization knew that to make true innovations in the field, it must be willing to operate differently than organizations that came before it. It provides scientists and researchers the freedom and flexibility to take them where science, data, technology, and their intuition lead them. MRA fosters the next generation of melanoma researchers and clinicians with the tools and experiences they need to be the leaders of tomorrow. Similarly, MRA’s Annual Scientific Retreat promotes networking and new collaborations across institutions, borders, and specialty areas. The result? Breakthroughs in treatment, including the support of 16 new FDA approvals, improvements in quality of life and survivorship, and a whole new landscape with which patients, clinicians, researchers, advocates, and others can collaborate to further move the needle.

Over these 15 years, MRA has proudly invested more than $150 million directly into the world’s most promising science and research. This includes more than 440 grant awards yielding some of the best return on investment (ROI) in clinical research; nearly half-a-billion dollars in follow-on funding. MRA funding often represents an early-career investigator’s first major grant award, providing the resources they need to test their hypothesis and generate data, and ultimately yielding innovative discoveries providing the basis for future grant support for years to come. Similarly, MRA supports leading scientists from across the globe, giving them the funding and support they need to fully explore innovative ideas and paradigm shifting research. The result: measurable progress that makes a difference in the lives of patients every day.

Albert Chiou, MD – Stanford University

“Transformative results require visionary philanthropy.”

Stephanie Kauffman,

President and Chief Operating Officer at MRA

When MRA was launched 15 years ago, few could have imagined the catalytic effect it would have in both the melanoma and cancer research spaces. At that time, there was little by way of treatment options for patients with advanced melanoma, the field was all but stagnant, funding was difficult to come by, and most individuals with advanced disease died.

Despite the obvious obstacles, MRA boldly stated from day one its mission to cure melanoma. The organization knew that to make true innovations in the field, it must be willing to operate differently than organizations that came before it. It provides scientists and researchers the freedom and flexibility to take them where science, data, technology, and their intuition lead them. MRA fosters the next generation of melanoma researchers and clinicians with the tools and experiences they need to be the leaders of tomorrow. Similarly, MRA’s Annual Scientific Retreat promotes networking and new collaborations across institutions, borders, and specialty areas. The result? Breakthroughs in treatment, including the support of 16 new FDA approvals, improvements in quality of life and survivorship, and a whole new landscape with which patients, clinicians, researchers, advocates, and others can collaborate to further move the needle.

Over these 15 years, MRA has proudly invested more than $150 million directly into the world’s most promising science and research. This includes more than 440 grant awards yielding some of the best return on investment (ROI) in clinical research; nearly half-a-billion dollars in follow-on funding. MRA funding often represents an early-career investigator’s first major grant award, providing the resources they need to test their hypothesis and generate data, and ultimately yielding innovative discoveries providing the basis for future grant support for years to come. Similarly, MRA supports leading scientists from across the globe, giving them the funding and support they need to fully explore innovative ideas and paradigm shifting research. The result: measurable progress that makes a difference in the lives of patients every day.

Albert Chiou, MD – Stanford University

“Transformative results require visionary philanthropy.”

Stephanie Kauffman,

President and Chief Operating Officer at MRA

“We know more about melanoma than we’ve ever known before—and in large part to the contributions of the MRA,” says Dr. Marc Hurlbert, Chief Executive Officer at MRA. “We know more about the biology of melanoma, treatment resistance, tumor mutations, how melanoma spreads and metastasizes, and the genetic difference between rare melanoma subtypes and cutaneous melanoma. Because of all the progress the field has made, we’re also able to identify the specific research gaps that exist.”

The juxtaposition between the research advancements and the research gaps are stark. Answering these questions, however, has become MRA’s North Star, directing the focus of what has become a new, bold, and ambitious plan. Efforts include MRA doubling its fundraising efforts — and capacity to fund innovative and lifesaving research — to an extraordinary $100 million dollars over the next 5 years. MRA is determined to actively move science forward, help patients most in need, and to scale as quickly as possible.

The vision includes four primary goals. These include:

1. Developing new treatments for patients that don’t respond to existing therapies. Although half of all patients with advanced melanoma benefit from existing treatments, the remaining half do not. “Even with the stories of triumph, success, and cure,” says Hurlbert, “we also have really devastating stories of lives cut too short — and it’s magnified because of the progress we’ve seen.” MRA is working hard to explore new treatments and novel immune therapies to address the gap where the current standard of care is not effective and to level the playing field for all patients. “We don’t want any patients to feel left behind,” says Hurlbert.

2. Improving treatment options and outcomes for patients with brain metastases. Melanoma has a high propensity to metastasize and spread to the brain and other central nervous system areas. Approximately 60% of patients with advanced melanoma develop brain metastases during the course of their disease.1 “We really need to understand why melanoma spreads to the brain and is able to go dormant, evading immune system detection, and what triggers melanomas out of that dormancy to initiate growth,” says Dr. Joan Levy, Chief Science Officer at MRA. Basically, why is the brain fertile soil for melanoma tumors to settle in and grow? MRA is working collaboratively across cancer types to better understand and develop treatments for brain metastases. We also have to ensure that when we find new treatments for brain metastases there will be clinical trials inclusive of these patients.

Joan Levy, PhD —
MRA Chief Science Officer

3. Translating new treatments for rare melanomas — including acral, mucosal, uveal, and pediatric melanoma. Patients with rare melanomas face unique challenges ranging from later diagnoses, poorer prognoses, and a lack of treatment options designed specifically to address the unique features of their tumors. MRA research investments of over $18 million have begun to advance the field’s understanding around the biology of these rare melanomas and their molecular genomics. To help answer additional critical questions, MRA has launched the RARE Registry (raremelanoma.org), a web-based, bidirectional, and interactive registry for patients with acral or mucosal melanoma. “Through the registry, patients with these rare melanoma subtypes can partner with researchers to accelerate research by helping the field better understand their unique patient journeys,” says Levy. “We’re also able to return de-identified data insights back to participants in real time. This allows them to access customized data snapshots to see how they fit into the entire cohort — something that can be really powerful for a rare cancer community. It’s exciting that participants can see research as it emerges as well as get tailored educational materials, clinical trial alerts, and webinars that they might be interested in,” says Levy. “The registry will be critical both in helping researchers get the data they need, but just as importantly helping them understand the patient’s journey as they experience it.”

4. Improving prevention, risk prediction, and diagnosis. Despite incredible progress in advancing new treatment options, melanoma continues to be the deadliest form of skin cancer with an estimated 100,000 new cases diagnosed each year in the United States alone. “There is an urgent need for new tools and new technologies to help a patient be empowered at home to check their own moles and for primary care doctors and nurse practitioners to say, ‘Aha, that is suspicious, let’s refer you to a dermatologist,” says Hurlbert. “Dermatologists also need more tools, such as artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms, to help them answer questions like, ‘Should I biopsy or not’ and then to assist pathologists to make definitive diagnoses.”

Just as MRA’s operating model has been unique, so too has its approach to partnerships. MRA helps bring together scientists, physicians, researchers, industry partners, government and regulatory officials, patients, advocates, philanthropists, and other nonprofit groups. This has been done through its Team Science Awards, nurturing collaborations across departments and institutions while also training a young investigator and through its Scientific Retreat where the best and brightest from across the world convene to share information and advance progress.

Stephanie Kauffman

“At MRA, we unite around research, the only way we will achieve a future beyond melanoma. But that research relies on us all. Everyone has a critical role to ending melanoma.”

Stephanie Kauffman,

President and Chief Operating Officer at MRA

“We know more about melanoma than we’ve ever known before—and in large part due to the contributions of the MRA.”

Marc Hulbert, PhD

Chief Executive Officer, MRA

Marc Hurlbert

Marc Hurlbert

“We know more about melanoma than we’ve ever known before – and in large part due to the contributions of the MRA”

Marc Hulbert, PhD

Chief Executive Officer, MRA

“I think that’s a real differentiator,” says Hurlbert, “we’re willing to partner with and collaborate with everyone. I think what we’ll see five years from now is that it won’t just be MRA working with other melanoma nonprofits, but we’ll also be working across cancer communities — from breast, to lung, and pan-cancer organizations like the American Cancer Society. “We’re also forging research partnerships with organizations beyond cancer,” says Levy. For example, research shows that some specific cells and proteins may play a role both in the neurodegeneration seen in Parkinson’s Disease and in the progression of melanoma. To explore this further, MRA partnered with the Michael J. Fox Foundation to co-fund two scientists. “It will take all of us working together to move the needle quickly.”

Activating this vision also requires new tools and strategies to engage the community. MRA is doing this through its online patient community, the Melanoma Exchange available at CureMelanoma.org/Community, its own digital communications channels, as well as a newly launched in-person salon series. Each salon is an intimate event that pulls in luminaries in the field to facilitate discussion about the future of skin health. “We are working with board members and other interested donors to open up their homes, or a place of their choosing, to create a dialogue with people who may not know about us but are interested in their skin health, melanoma, immunology, and where things are headed in terms of cancer research,” says Kauffman. To date, salons have been hosted in Los Angeles; Boston; Naples, Florida; Aspen; and New York.

MRA hopes that people leave with knowledge of all the interesting and groundbreaking work being conducted in cancer research. Moreover, investing in melanoma is very much an investment in cancer research broadly. Melanoma has been at the forefront of immunology, targeted treatments, and other innovations that have gone on to inform the way many other types of cancer are treated. “What happens first in melanoma often is then applied to other cancer types,” says Hurlbert. “It makes supporting melanoma research a very powerful way to advance oncology.”

MRA is also embracing science; working with patients to design the next generation of clinical trials; uncovering new answers — and questions — through its RARE Registry; and leading big data science projects with the Department of Veterans Affairs, the VA Hospital System, and Massachusetts General Hospital. Other MRA funded investigators are looking at cutting-edge technologies, including single cell analysis to study the tumor in context of its microenvironment including its neighboring cells, as well as projects in aging and how that impacts response to therapies.

Imagining what might be possible in the next five years, Hurlbert says, “It won’t be that MRA just funded it. It will be that we partnered and collaborated with everyone. We brought to bear tools to support patients, tools to improve diagnosis, and we’ll have supported the discovery of much-needed new treatment options. We’ll be the funder but also the partner and the collaborator in doing that research. We will be the leader moving the entire field forward. It’s not about redoubling the budget; it’s about recognizing the real sense of urgency that we feel a personal commitment to every day.” Melanoma O

Leveraged Finance Fights Melanoma (LFFM) 2023 event at the Museum of Modern Art

1. Diaz MJ, Mark I, Rodriguez D, et al. Melanoma Brain Metastases: A Systematic Review of Opportunities for Earlier Detection, Diagnosis, and Treatment. Life; 2023, 13(3): 828. Available at: www.mdpi.com/2075-1729/13/3/828#:~:text=Metastasis%20to%20the%20central%20nervous,of%20their%20disease%20%5B7%5D.