When UCLA’s Dr. Antoni Ribas was researching a potential therapy for melanoma, a form of skin cancer, he stumbled upon something unexpected. That discovery led to a $5 million award from the governing Board of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) to develop a therapy to accelerate wound healing in legs.

Treating skin ulcers

Venous skin ulcers are open sores on the legs that can take weeks—or even years—to heal. Without treatment, they can cause serious complications. About 1% of Americans have these ulcers. They usually develop when leg veins fail to move blood back to the heart, causing pressure, swelling, and painful wounds. Older adults, women, and non‑white populations face the highest risk.

No FDA‑approved drugs exist for this condition. These ulcers can lead to severe skin or bone infections and, in rare cases, skin cancer.

Targeted therapies

In a UCLA news release, Dr. Antoni Ribas explained that his team was testing a melanoma drug called vemurafenib. This targeted therapy—known as a BRAF inhibitor—shrinks or slows metastatic melanoma in patients with BRAF‑mutant tumors.

“We noticed that in the first two months of taking this BRAF inhibitor, patients showed thickening or overgrowth of the skin,” Ribas said. “It was a paradox—the drug stopped melanoma cells with the BRAF mutation, but it stimulated healthy skin cells.”

That unexpected side effect sparked a new idea: use the drug’s skin‑stimulating effect to help patients with chronic wounds.

“Aside from a few famous cases, discovering a side effect that becomes a therapy is rare,” Ribas said. “I had to work hard to convince someone in my lab to follow my crazy idea and step away from immunotherapy work to do wound‑healing experiments.”

A “crazy idea” becomes a therapy candidate

Thanks to that idea, Ribas and his team are now testing a gel called LUT017. The gel stimulates skin stem cells to multiply and produce more keratinocytes—cells essential for skin repair and wound healing.

A CIRM CLIN1 grant of $5,005,126 will help the team manufacture LUT017, test it in preclinical models, and apply to the FDA for permission to begin a clinical trial.

“This program adds to CIRM’s diverse portfolio of regenerative medicine approaches to tackle chronic, debilitating conditions that lead to complications, hospitalization, and a poor quality of life,” said Dr. Maria T. Millan, CIRM’s President and CEO.