Modeling melanoma

In the past decades, cutaneous melanoma incidence and mortality rates have been steadily increasing. It is only recently that survival rates have improved and this might partly be attributable to earlier diagnosis and timely resection of lesions. Nevertheless, treatment of metastatic melanoma remains largely unsuccessful. Thus, modeling melanoma in cell cultures, or in transgenic mice, is required to understand the melanocytic aberrations inherent to a melanoma, and to test and exploit potential new therapies.

Section editors:Nikolina Vlatkovic and Mark Boyd – University of Liverpool, UK