Researchers at Fox Chase Cancer Center have received a Director’s Discretionary Allocation Award from Argonne National Laboratory, a U.S. Department of Energy facility. The award supports the Melanoma-Immune Checkpoint Blockade (ICB) project, which aims to advance research in melanoma immunotherapy.
“These blockades are a type of immunotherapy that includes three antibody-based treatments for advanced melanoma. The problem is we don’t really know which treatment will be effective for a specific patient. The goal with this project is to find more quantitative molecular-level biomarkers that can predict if a certain treatment will work for that patient,” said Lee, an Assistant Professor at Fox Chase.
Lee, who is also a member of Fox Chase’s research team, co-leads the Melanoma-ICB project with another institute member and Professor in the Nuclear Dynamics and Cancer Research Program. Argonne National Laboratory operates as a federally funded research center in Illinois.
The Fox Chase initiative focuses on identifying biomarkers for ICB based on DNA methylation and aims to improve prediction models by using larger datasets containing various types of biological data, such as RNA and 3D genomes. This approach could help researchers understand gene expression and disease impact to better inform therapy decisions.
The project began over a year ago with initial support from the Melanoma Research Alliance, which provided funding for experimental work alongside computational studies.
A clinical collaborator for the project serves as Co-Director and Chief of Solid Tumor Oncology at Fox Chase. Two facilities within Fox Chase — including its Genomic Resource Facility — are contributing critical support.
With the new allocation from Argonne, researchers gain access to high-performance computing resources through the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility (ALCF). This infrastructure allows accelerated modeling and analysis of immune checkpoint blockade mechanisms in melanoma. The award provides time on ALCF’s system for large-scale simulations and data-intensive research, along with storage capacity to manage generated data.
“This opportunity to leverage Argonne’s cutting-edge computational resources marks a significant step forward in our efforts to better understand and improve cancer immunotherapy,” said Lee. “We are deeply grateful to them for their generous support of our work and look forward to the discoveries this allocation will enable.”
Fox Chase Cancer Center was established in Philadelphia in 1904. As reported in its 2022 annual report, it performed 5,069 surgeries and admitted 3,488 patients during that year. Its current president is Dr. Robert Uzzo (https://www.foxchase.org/about-us/annual-report).
