A Blood Test to Find Cancer Cells and Predict How Your Melanoma Will Respond to Treatment

In Plain English

This study is looking for a better way to detect cancer cells that have escaped into your bloodstream and tiny molecules called microRNAs that might tell doctors how your uveal melanoma (or other types of melanoma that aren't on the skin) will behave. Instead of waiting weeks for imaging scans to show whether treatment is working, researchers want to develop a blood test that could give you answers much faster—like a 'report card' from your cancer cells themselves. You'll have blood samples taken at different points during your care, and researchers will analyze them to see if they can predict which treatments will work best for you and how your disease might progress. This is a research study, not a treatment—no one is giving you new drugs here. The goal is to create a tool that could help doctors make better decisions about your care in the future.

What This Trial Does

the study aims to implement new approaches for the identification of circulating tumor cells and circulating microRNAs, which aim to silence the expression of genes and thus prevent the production of proteins in patients with advanced melanoma (uval, mucosal, of unknown origin). It also aims to verify whether their expression can be related to the prognosis of the disease and the response to treatments.

How It Works

Here we propose a study to identify a technique for the isolation of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) from blood samples of patients with diagnosis of metastatic melanoma (uveal, mucosal, from primary unknown) to identify a potential role of CTCs and to study the role for circulating microRNAs (miRNAs) in the management of metastatic UM, MM and MUP.

Who Can Join