Surgery Faculty Member Martin McCarter, MD, Receives Melanoma Research Foundation’s 2025 Humanitarian Award

In recognition of the compassionate care he shows to his patients, University of Colorado Anschutz Department of Surgery faculty member Martin McCarter, MD, received the Melanoma Research Foundation’s 2025 Humanitarian Award at the organization’s Denver Gala on September 18.

McCarter — professor of surgical oncology, the Gary, Debbie, and Brandon Mandelbaum Endowed Chair in Melanoma Research, and surgical director of the Esophageal and Gastric Multidisciplinary Clinic at the CU Cancer Center — is a national leader in immunotherapy for melanoma — in particular, the emerging field of tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs), a process in which a tumor is removed from the patient and the immune cells that recognize the tumor are extracted. Those cells are grown to large numbers in the laboratory, then re-infused into the patient to attack the tumor throughout the body.

We spoke with McCarter about the award and his melanoma research.

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What is the Melanoma Research Foundation, and how long have you been involved with it?

The Melanoma Research Foundation is a patient-formed advocacy group that is one of the larger nongovernmental funders of melanoma research. I've worked with them on and off over several years and have applied to them many times for grants.

What does it mean to you to receive the Humanitarian Award?

I’m very grateful to be recognized and honored. The Humanitarian Award is given annually to a provider in the community who exhibits humanitarian qualities when they take care of patients, as well as conducting research and advocacy for melanoma patients. When it really comes down to it, that's what it's all about.

And it's not just me. I'm one member of a team. There's the melanoma treatment team, but there also are the patients, their families, and their caregivers, and they're all equally part of this award.

When you're able to use funding and support from this organization and others like it to find ways to help more patients or see a patient do well from treatment, what does that feel like to be able to help somebody through that scary time in their lives?

It's an incredible privilege to take care of patients during what is often the most frightening and uncertain time in their lives. I am continuously inspired by their resilience and determination—and by the unwavering support of their families and caregivers. To be able to provide some care, comfort, guidance, and hope is an incredible privilege on my part.

How important is it for you to stay in touch with patients over the years?

That depends on the scenario. In a very straightforward melanoma case, they don't need to see me again — we're one and done. But there are others who have recurrence of the disease or metastatic disease, and those are the ones I tend to get more involved and engaged with, because that becomes more of a long-term relationship. There’s a lot of decision-making in terms of what's the best treatment or combination treatment — there is surgery, radiation therapy, immunotherapy, clinical trials. Often, you start out one path, then we have to journey to another path. The goal is to try to keep people alive as long as we can, until we can cure this disease.

How important is research to that effort? What kind of advances have you seen in research over the past decade or so?

Ten or 20 years ago, melanoma had a very dismal prognosis. With all the advances in the past 10 to 20 years, melanoma is now leading the way in immunotherapy-related treatments. My passion is immunology and immunotherapy, and we've seen tremendous advances in that arena. It's solved some problems, but it hasn't solved all of them. We still need to work to figure out those next solutions. That's why the Melanoma Research Foundation is so important, because they fund a lot of cutting-edge and even high-risk research. Not all research has a direct beneficial result, but the aggregate has made huge differences just in the past decade or two. I personally believe we've only scratched the surface of what we can do with immunotherapy and TIL therapy. I believe that is the new frontier for melanoma research.

Featured image: Martin McCarter speaking at the Melanoma Research Foundation gala.