Ze'ev Ronai, Ph.D (Text Version)

2024 MRP Vignette

Title: Early Detection and Prevention is the Name of the Game

Interview with Ze'ev Ronai, Ph.D., CDMRP Melanoma Research Program, Programmatic Chair Emeritus, Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute

I've been involved in the MRP, the Melanoma program since 2018 and had the pleasure and the honor to be part of this group, especially as part of the vision setting, set forth the direction of investment for melanoma researchers.

We looked for a unique fact or distinguishing direction that will take the MRP to a place that no other institute or funding source can go. And we have done that by identifying the prevention as a major focus area for the MRP. So, being part of the Vision committee that allow to drive the prevention as a focus area, I think has been enormously important for the melanoma community and for the patient community at large, because there is no other entity that I know, funding entity, that devote efforts that are directed for prevention.

The programmatic panel consists of physicians. Some of them are clinicians and see patients in medical centers and in Army hospitals across the country. Some of them are scientists that are doing forefront research and this blend offer a unique environment to come up with ideas and exchange opinions in a way that usually you're not able to.

Thanks to the notion that we do have military personnel, experts, whether it's physicians or scientists [as] part of the committee reminds us all the time why we are doing what we are doing and the benefit to military is enormously important component we think about when we come up with the vision setting- what is it that we want to do it and who will benefit from getting money from the DoD and how this would contribute to the military in the long or short run.

The consumer advocate are also part of the Vision committee. We have two or three of them that are part of the committee, though, as important as anybody else in making the decision, reviewing, assessing, contributing to the path forward. And so, it's a unique blend and a very important part of us.

Impact is absolutely a key component of our vision. And when you talk about prevention, impact in prevention is preventing melanoma or preventing melanoma metastasis. This is a little more difficult to, to, to gauge and the reason is that this is a endpoint that takes time. When you're talking about treatment, you can immediately see the outcome, when you speak about other modalities or endpoints, you can usually see much faster the outcome. Prevention will take a little more time, and I think that the DOD ability to do that is enormously important and a pioneer, in a sense.

I think today the most critical problems that we have in melanoma is the fact that this tumor metastasize like no other. So the propensity to metastasis is enormously high. The other is the ability to develop resistance to therapy. Those are the problems that clinicians and scientists- the biggest problem they need to solve. I think that beyond that, early detection and prevention is going to be the name of the game, if we can get to that point.