Global skin cancer research consortium wins £7m

Skin cancer studies around the world will be brought together to help people understand how at risk they from the disease thanks to a Leeds-led consortium which has been awarded over £7m of funding.

Led by Leeds’ dermatologist Professor Julia Newton-Bishop, the international Genomel consortium brings together teams from around the world who are working on the genetics of melanoma and identifying who is prone to developing the cancer.

The funding from the European Union Framework 6 programme will support the work on the cancer’s causes but also be used to develop a website where anyone can look log in and look up how at risk they are from melanoma. The website will also include advice on the disease, what to look for and how it is treated. Melanoma is one of the most serious forms of skin cancer and accounts for 3% of cancer cases diagnosed in the UK every year.

Professor Newton-Bishop said: “By getting all the world’s major groups working on melanoma genetics to work together, we can answer very important questions which no single group could answer on its own. The research will be much more powerful partly because simply of size (pooled, much larger amounts of data) and because GenoMEL brings together expertise together from three continents.”