Tel Aviv U makes skin cancer breakthrough

A new Tel Aviv University study sheds light on the trigger that causes melanoma cancer cells to transform from non-invasive cells to invasive killer agents, pinpointing the precise stage at which the cancer becomes lethal.

The research is headed by Dr. Carmit Levy at the university’s Sackler School of Medicine, and conducted by researchers from TAU, the Technion Institute of Technology, the Sheba Medical Center, the Institut Gustave Roussy and The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

“To understand melanoma, I had to obtain a deep understanding about the structure and function of normal skin,” Levy says, “Melanoma is a cancer that … in its aggressive form it will invade the dermis, a lower layer, where it eventually invades the bloodstream or lymph vessels, causing metastasis in other organs of the body. But before invading the dermis, melanoma cells surprisingly extend upward, then switch directions to invade.

“It occurred to me that there had to be a trigger in the microenvironment of the skin that made the melanoma cells ‘invasive,'” she says.

Skin cancer is the most common of all cancers, and melanoma, which accounts for 2% of skin cancer cases, is responsible for nearly all skin cancer deaths.