A medical team from Melbourne, Australia will head an international cancer trial. The phase two of vaccine trials to treat melanoma has been awarded to the Joint Austin Health Ludwig Institute - they will receive $870,000 to head the trial from a US cancer charity.

Jonathan Cebon, Associate Professor at the institute says the treatment works by targeting a molecule on cancer cells known as NY-ESO-1.

He said \"We’ve got results that do excite us about how this vaccine affects the immune system. So the next step is to say okay, this is acting on the immune system, now what does that do to patients who have got cancer such as malignant melanoma. Does that activation of the immune system against this target NY-ESO-1 result in the cancer shrinking or perhaps disappearing?\"