Cancer researcher receives grant to develop new therapies for advanced melanoma

Roger S. Lo
Roger S. Lo
1 min read

Dr. Roger Lo, professor of dermatology in the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and a member of the UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center, received a three-year, $600,000 grant from the V Foundation for Cancer Research to help understand and develop new therapies for an aggressive form of melanoma driven by so-called RAS mutations.

Lo’s team dissects genomic, epigenomic and immunologic factors that shape the cancer’s evolution on mutation-targeted therapies and/or immune checkpoint inhibitors. This grant will help support Lo’s work in finding new ways to treat NRAS mutant melanoma, which is a very aggressive form of skin cancer that is often resistant to current therapies. Lo and members of his laboratory will test ways to sequence combinations of therapies to create synergy and reduce toxicities.

Lo is one of 17 scientists who was awarded with the foundation’s translational grant to help bring cancer research from the bench to the bedside.

The late Jim Valvano, an ESPN commentator and basketball coach who led North Carolina State to the NCAA title in 1983, funded the V Foundation to help support scientists nationwide change the landscape of cancer.