A study that examined how ocular melanoma metastasis happens and tested a therapy that could stop it was featured in UIC Today, along with its authors, including University of Illinois Cancer Center members Kaori Yamada, PhD, and Michael Heiferman, MD, and first author Nguyễn Thị Thanh Nhàn, PhD, a former Postdoctoral Fellow in the Yamada lab.
The study, “Uveal Melanoma with a GNA11/GNAQ Mutation Secretes VEGF for Systemic Spread,” was published in Signal Transduction and Targeted Therapy, a Nature journal.
All study authors are or have been affiliated with the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC). Yamada is the study’s corresponding author and Assistant Professor in the Departments of Pharmacology and Regenerative Medicine and Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences at the University of Illinois College of Medicine at UIC. Heiferman, Assistant Professor of Ophthalmology in the College of Medicine, is a vitreoretinal surgeon and ocular oncologist at UI Health. Other UIC study authors are Daniel E. Maidana, MD, PhD, Ophthalmologist and Surgeon in the Pediatric Ophthalmology Service and Pediatric Retina and Retinopathy of Prematurity Service at UI Health, and Sanjay Ganesh, a UIC undergraduate studying Biology and Computer Science who is part of the Yamada and Heiferman labs.