Friday, 20th November Australasian Melanoma Conference 2026

Other Chairs: Grant McArthur & Mark Shackleton

• Early detection and precision prognostics: What's now and what's new? - Yevgeniy Semenov
• From AI to Programmable Medicines: Engineering the Next Generation of Cancer Therapeutics  - Vivek Naranbhai

• UK experience with AI-assisted triage - Rubeta Matin
• Imaging AI in Skin Cancer Practice - John Prossor
• Legal and regulatory considerations when using AI in clinical practice - Lisa Abbott
• Using scribes in practice - Stephen Salerno
• AI: The Consumer/Patient Perspective - Monika Janda
• Known and Unknown AI Gems - Harrison Edwards

• Precision Oncology Meets Precision Supportive Care: Diagnosing, Managing, and Prognosticating Cutaneous Immunotherapy Toxicities - Yevgeniy Semenov
• Title coming soon - Zaid Ardalan
• 3M: Weaponised Immunity — The Westmead Experience - Ming-Wei Lin
• Polygenic risk for idiopathic Inflammatory Bowel Disease predicts severe colitis following Immune Checkpoint Blockade in advanced melanoma - Hadis Ghajari
• Circulating Antibody Profiling Identifies Predictive Biomarkers of Outcome and irAEs in Melanoma   - Joanna Chan

• Multidisciplinary team perspectives on specialist melanoma nurse role integration and system-level impact across a national program - Shahn Coburn
• Expanding Access to Specialist Skin Cancer Care: Supporting Rural Patients and the Evolving Role of Skin Cancer Nurses  - emma zurawel and Melissa Sheldon
• RISE4SkinCancer program: Regionally Integrated Systems Enhancement for Skin Cancer), a five-year initiative focused on improving skin cancer care in rural Victoria - Leigh Kinsman and David Glanville
• Panel Discussion: When treatment becomes the Challenge: Severe Multisystem Immunotherapy Complications in Advanced Melnoma - Andrew Haydon, Steven Nicolaides, Jessica Fitzpatrick and Donna Milne

• Moonlighting nuclear function of the GTP-producing enzyme IMPDH2 in melanoma suppression - Gamze Kuser Abali
• Mobile dermatoscope type in patient-performed teledermoscopy. - Deonna Ackermann
• Spatial transcriptomic analysis of primary melanomas with extreme clinical outcomes. - Prachi Bhave
• Pathologic Response Following Neoadjuvant Therapy in Merkel Cell Carcinoma  - Joseph C Broderick
• IGFBP2 is Elevated in BAP1-deficient UM and is Associated with Better Survival under Nutrient Stress - Vivian Chua
• Measuring Progress, Driving Action: Australia’s National Skin Cancer Scorecard - Tamara Dawson
• Decoding Immunotherapy Resistance in Melanoma Through Tumour-Resident Immune Archetypes and Gene Regulatory Networks  - Andrea Di Pietro
• Occupational Sun Exposure and Melanoma Prognosis: Risks of Recurrence and Melanoma-Specific Mortality - Danielle Gavanescu
•   Minds Matter in Melanoma Care: A Clinical Psychology Service Evaluation  - Claire Gore
• Comparing genetic risk profiles between in situ and invasive melanoma - Marloes Helder
• Collaborative and innovative melanoma support: a model of care to improve access to specialist melanoma supportive care - Peta Holly
• Implementation of total body photography for skin cancer early detection: A systematic review - Nurul Hussain
• Lentigo Maligna masquerading as re-pigmentation of scalp hair. Was previously tinea capitis radiotherapy a contributing factor? - Madeleine Louise Kelly
• PERTIL-01: Australia’s First Phase II Trial of Locally Manufactured Tumour-Infiltrating Lymphocyte Therapy for Patients with Metastatic Melanoma Resistant to Immune Checkpoint Inhibitors  - Peter K Lau
• Uveal Melanoma Acquired Resistance to Darovasertib and Crizotinib - Jason S Lee
• Audit of sentinel node biopsy outcomes in cutaneous melanoma: exploration of the Melanoma Institute Australia (MIA) Sentinel Node Metastasis Risk Prediction Tool in a regional setting - Patrick Litchfield
• Optimising Cutaneous Toxicity Management in Melanoma Therapy: Impact of Specialist Dermatology Review on Systemic Steroid Use and Treatment Continuity - Yuyang Liu
• A randomized, phase 2/3 clinical trial investigating RP2 plus nivolumab vs ipilimumab plus nivolumab in immune checkpoint inhibitor–naïve patients with metastatic uveal melanoma - Georgina V. Long
• Incorporation of sociodemographic factors into prognostic modelling of cutaneous melanoma using machine learning beats classic clinicopathologic risk stratification and could redefine the next disease staging paradigm. - Nicholas M Muller
• Significant reduction in ultraviolet exposure under portable beach shelter by dynamic side wall positioning : implications for primary prevention of skin cancer and melanoma beyond the fabric rating - Margaret Oziemski
• HIF-1α dependency shapes the response of MAPKi-resistant melanoma to PHD inhibition - Claire CP Palma
• Enrolling and Retaining Cohort Study Participants in Regional NSW - Insights From Our Experience - Olga K Pawlik
• We told them, why didn't it stick? Rethinking patient education in melanoma care  - Claire Gore
• A randomized, controlled, multicenter, phase 3 study of RP1 (vusolimogene oderparepvec) combined with nivolumab vs physician’s choice of therapy in patients with advanced melanoma that has progressed on anti–PD-1 and anti–CTLA-4 therapy (IGNYTE-3) - Shahneen K. Sandhu
• DDX46 is a Novel Signaling Hub Orchestrating Hot-Cold Tumor Switch in Melanoma - Adriana Sanna
• Association of body composition on survival outcomes in melanoma patients undergoing immunotherapy: a retrospective study - Karen E Sheppard
• Safety and Feasibility of Exercise for People Receiving Immune Checkpoint Inhibitors for Melanoma: Protocol of the Randomised Controlled EXHIBIT Study - Megan Sohtra
• The long and short of it: novel transcript discovery in melanoma using nanopore long-read RNA sequencing   - Jun Yao Teow
• Repurposing the anti-parasitic ivermectin inhibits the emergence of drug-tolerant persisters in melanoma - Madeleine Thompson
• Polygenic risk scores modify the penetrance of pathogenic variants in melanoma - Huanwei Wang
• Landscape of T-cell leveraging therapies in metastatic melanoma - Farzana Y Zaman
• Checkpoint kinase 1 inhibitor + low-dose hydroxyurea overcomes therapeutic resistance in melanoma and is enhanced by targeting tumour-associated macrophages - Zhen Zeng
• Cutaneous Complications of Immune Checkpoint Inhibitors: A Narrative Review - Ahmed Awad

• Changing the advertising code one submission at a time - Anne Gately
• What does it take to reach an audience with a media campaign in times of distraction - Camilla Hercus
• The Spot: When art becomes a tool for melanoma awareness. - Tamara Dawson
• Making UV Visible: The Sunburnt Car Project - Jo Maitz
• Sun protection and TikTok - Alvin Chong
• Panel Discussion: Sun, Media & Public Communications - Tamara Dawson

• 10-things I hate about: Melanoma overdiagnosis - Tony Caccetta
• Clinician perspectives for: Melanoma overdiagnosis - Tony Caccetta
• Managing overdiagnosis: lessons from Australia’s national cancer screening programs - Vivienne Milch
• It's just the price we pay? A Health Economic perspective on Melanoma Overdiagnosis - Daniel Lindsay
• Melanoma? Now what? Consumer perspectives. - Peter Gourlay
• Pathological Aspects of Overdiagnosis - Louise Jackett
• Panel Discussion: Collaborative Solutions to Overdiagnosis - Tony Caccetta

• Environmentally stressed drug-naive melanoma cells share a molecular signature with drug-tolerant and drug-resistant cells - Nikolas Haass
• Evaluating Insulin-like Growth Factor Binding 2 (IGFBP2) as a Mediator of Metastasis and Therapeutic Vulnerability in Uveal Melanoma - Vivian Chua
• IFNɣ promotes progression of nodal disease in metastatic melanoma  - Thomas Gebhardt
• Identification of metabolic phenotypes associated with prognosis and therapeutic response in patients with melanoma (MetaMel Study) - a trial in progress update - Thomas Breakell

Session Chairs: Craig Sinclair 

• Molecular evidence of UV causation at cellular level - Hunter Shain
• Sunscreen labelling and what consumers understand - Anna Nicholson
• Sunscreen and Vitamin D: results from the Sun-D Trial - Rachel Neale
• Molecular Causation - Amaya Viros
• Public interest and media stories - CHOICE report and other sunscreen interest stories in the media - Rachel Carbonell
• Spectral composition of ambient ultraviolet radiation and melanoma incidence across Australia - Catherine M Olsen
• Panel Discussion: UV and Sunscreen: Science vs Fiction - Craig Sinclair

• We should NOT perform skin checks - Linda Martin
• Should we perform skin checks - Mostafa Khalafalla
• We should NOT perform a primary site wide excision for invasive melanoma - David Speakman
• We should perform a primary site wide excision for invasive melanoma - Alexander van Akkooi
• We should NOT give adjuvant immunotherapy for SN positive disease - Rachel Roberts-Thomson
• We SHOULD give adjuvant immunotherapy for SN positive disease - Shahneen Sandhu
• We should perform a therapeutic lymph node dissection for metastic melanoma nodal disease post neoadjuvant drug therapy - Thomas Pennington
• We should perform an index lymph node resection for metastic melanoma nodal disease post neoadjuvant drug therapy - Thomas Michael Hughes
• Can less be more? Exploring consumer and clinician perspectives on deintensification in melanoma using digital democracy tools - Jennifer A Soon
• Mind the Gap: Impact of new labels on public perceptions and calculated risk of adverse outcomes after a melanoma in-situ diagnosis. A secondary analysis of an online randomised experiment - Zhuohan Wu
• RADICAL Trial: results, cosmetic, patient-reported outcomes, and health economic synthesis; what’s next? - Pascale Guitera

• AI-Derived Biomarkers from Whole Slide Imaging for Melanoma Prognostication - Yevgeniy Semenov
• Precision diagnostics for early melanoma detection using spatial biology and AI-guided image analysis - Mitchell S Stark
• Clinical and pathological characteristics of thin cutaneous melanomas with rapid recurrence. - Prachi Bhave
• Single-cell transcriptomic analysis of melanoma sentinel lymph nodes following pre-operative propranolol in a placebo-controlled, randomised trial. - Nicholas M Muller
• Early Detection of Melanoma Using Circulating Tumour-specific Antibodies - Tawany De Carvalho Gil
• Development and validation of a deep learning model with enhanced explainability for interpreting melanocytic tumour pathologies. - Nigel G Maher

• The Evolution of Skin Cancer - Hunter Shain
• Changing the narrative: regular sunscreen use increases the risk of vitamin D deficiency - Rachel Neale

Panellists: 

• Glenn McLeay
• Vanessa Morgan
• Grace Brown
• Peter Soyer
• Craig Sinclair