Two groups of San Diego researchers will be part of a new "Dream Team'' tasked with finding ways to fight melanoma using an innovation known as personalized medicine, Scripps Health announced today.
One of the groups is from the Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute and the other includes members of Scripps Research and the Scripps Research Institute, said Scripps Health spokesman Stephen Carpowich.
The team is being funded by a $6 million, three-year grant from Stand Up to Cancer and the Melanoma Research Alliance.
"This is a test case to determine whether personalized medicine can become a reality. It's our hope to be able to treat a patient with melanoma based on that person's own molecular profile -- an approach that's likely to be more effective and have fewer side effects than current treatments,'' said Dr. Kristina Vuori of Sanford-Burnham.
In addition to the Sanford-Burnham and Scripps researchers, the so- called "Dream Team'' includes members from the Mayo Clinic, Memorial Sloan-
Kettering Cancer Center, Michigan State University College of Human Medicine, Van Andel Research Institute and the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University.
