Certain viruses have been shown, in the laboratory, to be able to kill cancer cells. These viruses are not normally damaging to humans and don‘t generally cause significant illnesses. Some cancer cells have lost the ability to eradicate viruses in the way that healthy cells can, so that these viruses can be used to target and selectively kill cancer cells in patients. We are trying to improve the effectiveness of this approach by studying different viruses, and by combining the viruses with cells from the body‘s own immune system which themselves can attack cancer. Combining cell and viral therapy for cancer is an exciting new approach to cancer therapy. Critically, this research is focused on testing cells and viruses using human reagents, including tumour cells freshly resected from patients; this ensures that our work is of maximum relevance to the disease as seen in patients, and helps rapid translation of our findings into early clinical trials. We‘re specifically looking at melanoma; an aggressive form of skin cancer that kills thousands of people, particularly young people, each year, and for which there is little effective treatment. We hope our research will also benefit other cancers too.