A RESEARCH project is underway to help identify which skin cancer patients are at a higher risk of the disease spreading to other parts of their body.

An 18-month study is being led by Dr Rob Ellis, consultant dermatologist at James Cook University Hospital in Middlesbrough and senior lecturer at Newcastle University.

The study will look at why ulceration of the skin above a melanoma leads to greater risk of the disease spreading and will help improve diagnosis by predicting which patients are at greater risk.

Initial patient recruitment and pathology work was carried out at the Middlesbrough hospital after a £3,000 donation from James Cook University Hospital Voluntary Services.

Now national charity Melanoma Focus has announced a £100,000 grant to pay for a full-time laboratory scientist post at Newcastle University to analyse samples taken during the project.

It will also pay for historical melanoma samples to be be collected and analysed in the histopathology laboratory at James Cook.

Dr Ellis said: “If the biomarkers we are developing continue to identify high risk patients, they may well become part of the formal staging criteria for melanoma and as such be adopted worldwide.

“This would put James Cook on the map as a centre of skin cancer excellence, which is our aim for the next ten years”.