Description
PhotoMel – Decoding Early-Life UVA and Skincare Additive Interactions Driving Melanoma Risk and Progression in Young Adults
The Department of Dermatology at the Medical University of Vienna is proud to coordinate the recently launched Horizon Europe Mission Cancer project PhotoMel.
Running from 2026 to 2030 and funded with €5.7 million, the international consortium brings together leading institutions, including CeMM, EMBL, King’s College London, Leiden University and Lund University, to investigate malignant melanoma in young adult Europeans.
“We are very proud and excited to lead this project together with an interdisciplinary team of biologists, physicists, clinicians, imaging experts, computational scientists and communication experts from across Europe. Together, we aim to better understand melanoma initiation and progression in young adults under the age of 40,” says project coordinator Dr. Karin Pfisterer.
The overall goal of PhotoMel is to explore how environmental exposures during childhood and adolescence may shape cancer risk and spread. The project will investigate how UVA radiation, which is present in sunlight throughout the year, affects cells of the skin and the extracellular matrix surrounding them, and how these changes may influence the progression of melanoma once it develops. PhotoMel will also examine how chemicals found in everyday skincare products may modify these effects, either protecting the skin or potentially increasing risk.
By integrating biological and molecular data from in vitro skin models, state-of-the-art microscopy, CROP-seq, whole-genome sequencing and cutting-edge spatial multi-omics, the researchers aim to develop an innovative 3D computational model to identify exposure-linked patterns associated with a higher risk of aggressive disease.
Ultimately, PhotoMel aims to create the first mechanics-informed atlas of melanoma and its extracellular matrix and to develop a prototype for a patient-specific prediction tool. By linking environmental exposures, changes in the skin microenvironment and melanoma biology, the project seeks to improve our understanding of why some melanomas become more aggressive and, in the longer term, contribute to more personalised approaches to cancer risk assessment.
Link to the website: https://photomel.eu/
Key Details:
Project title: PhotoMel – Decoding Early-Life UVA and Skincare Additive Interactions Driving Melanoma Risk and Progression in Young Adults
Funding programme: Horizon Europe Mission Cancer
Coordination: Karin Pfisterer, Department of Dermatology, MedUni Vienna
Consortium partners:
- Medical University of Vienna, Austria – Coordinator
- Participants: Karin Pfisterer, Philipp Tschandl, Ichiro Okamoto, Department of Dermatology
- CeMM – Centre for Molecular Medicine, Austria
- Participant: Christoph Bock
- Leiden University, Netherlands
- Participant: Roeland Merks
- European Molecular Biology Laboratory, Germany
- Participants: Robert Prevedel, Carlo Brevilacqua, Fiona Watt
- King’s College London, United Kingdom
- Participant: Maddy Parsons
- Lund University, Sweden
- Participants: Kari Nielsen, affiliated with Region Skåne
- G. Marije Kruis, Austria - Melanoma Patient Advocate and Communication Expert
Total budget: €5,709,196.25
Budget share for the Medical University of Vienna: €2,137,725.00
Project start date: September 2026
Term: 48 months