Award for Ocular Oncology Service

Professor Damato attended the 6th International Conference on the Adjuvant Therapy of Malignant Melanoma, which was held in Stockholm on the 15-17 June 2006. This was an international conference, with delegates from all over the world.

He organized a session on ocular melanomas and delivered a lecture on Intraocular Melanoma. He also organized a session with lectures on metastatic melanoma, differences between ocular and cutaneous melanoma, and conjunctival melanoma, which were given by Sebastian Eskelin (Finland), Charlotta All-Eriksson (Sweden) and Jacob Pe'er (Israel).

The message given to the conference by Professor Damato was that some intraocular melanomas tend to disseminate from the eye to the liver and other parts of the body before the ocular tumour is even detected and treated, so that the best hopes for improving any chances of survival are with systemic treatment (i.e. tablets or injections). It is therefore necessary to identify patients having a life-threatening tumour so that these individuals can receive any preventative treatment as early as possible, before signs of tumour spread become apparent.

The best way of identifying dangerous tumours currently relies on tumour cytogenetics (i.e. checking genetic mutations occurring in the tumour itself). There may be scope for obtaining a tumour sample (i.e. performing a biopsy) in all patients, including those treated with radiotherapy. This is currently being considered by Professor Damato.

No systemic adjuvant therapy is yet available for intraocular melanoma, but methods for identifying patients with a high-grade (i.e. very malignant) melanoma should nevertheless be developed so that any promising new drugs can be evaluated without delay. Such evaluation would be more feasible and would be completed more quickly if only patients with 'bad melanomas' were enrolled in clinical studies, but this requires safe and effective biopsy as well as a suitable genetic test.

A simple method for biopsying intraocular tumours has been developed in Liverpool (already reported in this blog). We also have greater experience with clinical routine clinical cytogenetic studies than other ocular oncology centres.

The Organizing Committee and Faculty presented Professor Damato a prestigious award, which read: 'In Recognition of His Outstanding Contribution to Research and Clinical Care Development of Ocular Melanoma'. Professor Damato accepted this prize on behalf of the Ocular Oncology Team, the Royal Liverpool University Hospital, and the National Specialist Commissioning Advisory Group (NSCAG).