MRA provided a development award of $50,000 for one year, to a researcher whose work shows great promise for advancing the understanding and treatment of melanoma.

• Nallasivam Palanisamy, University of Michigan
  Proposal Title: Transcriptome sequencing to detect gene fusions in melanoma
  

  Palanisamy

  
  Recurrent chromosomal aberrations are the hallmark of hematological malignancies and soft tissue sarcomas and identification of such aberrations in solid tumors are difficult due to limitations in the conventional approaches. Dr. Palanisamy will apply the newly developed next generation sequencing technology (RNAseq) and high density oligo nucleotide comparative genomic hybridization (oligo array CGH) for the comprehensive assessment of melanoma cancer genome and transcriptome to identify the disease causing genetic aberrations.