Melanoma & Skin Cancer News Round Up: 28/11/2014

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• Rare condition forces three-year-old Eddison to be 'boy in the bubble'

The family of a three-year-old boy diagnosed with an incurable condition which makes him 10,000 times more likely to develop skin cancer have reached out to other families coping with the disorder.

Source: STV 

• How selenium in broccoli may fight melanoma

The mineral selenium, which naturally occurs in foods like broccoli and garlic, appears to slow down a process that allows cancers such as melanoma, prostate cancer, and leukemia to spread.


Source: Futurity 

• US Skin Cancer Costs Top $8 Billion Annually (USA)

Each year in the United States, nearly 5 million people are treated for skin cancer, at a cost of $8.1 billion dollars. The costs associated with skin cancer treatment are not only rising, but they are increasing substantially more than for other cancers.

Source: Medical Research 

• UCLA study paves the way to more effective melanoma treatment

Last September, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved pembrolizumab, which was found to be affective against melanoma, a deadly form of skin cancer. Sadly, not all melanoma patients benefit from the treatment and UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center investigators have determined a method that will predict which patients will respond to the drug. Their research should lead to more effective treatment of melanoma patients. The findings of the two year study were published online on November 26 in the journal Nature.

Source: Examiner 

Melanoma & Skin Cancer News Round Up: 21/11/2014

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• GPs urged to double cancer referrals in NHS guidelines

Patients who visit GPs with persistent tiredness should be fast-tracked for cancer tests within 48 hours, according to new NHS advice warning that delays in diagnosis could be costing thousands of lives.

Source: nflnr 

• Blue-Eyed People May Face Higher Melanoma Risk

New research suggests that genes tied to blue eyes and red hair could put people at higher risk for moles or freckling in childhood, which are often precursors to the deadly skin cancer melanoma later in life.

Source: WebMD

• Survival in Melanoma Ups Further: 'We Have Cure in Our Sights'

"Can we now cure an incurable disease in some of our patients with metastatic melanoma?" This was the questioned posed here at the end of the Society for Melanoma Research International Congress 2014 meeting.

Source: MedScape 

• Skin cancer risks: Outdoor work contributes to high melanoma death rate for men over 45 (Australia)

Twice as many Victorian men over 45 die from melanoma than women of the same age, according to new figures from the Cancer Council of Victoria.

Source: ABC 

• Slip, slop slack to blame for high rate of melanoma in men (Australia)

TWICE as many men are dying of melanoma than Victorian women, with lax sunscreen habits, reluctance to see a doctor and excessive sun exposure being blamed.

Source: Herald Sun 

• Skin cancer: how effective are smartphone apps for early detection? (United States)

Skin cancer is the most common cancer in the US, accounting for almost half of all cancers. But if it is detected early - before it has spread to other parts of the body - it is almost always curable. There are now an array of smartphone applications available claiming to aid early detection of skin cancer. But how effective are they?

Source: Medical News Today 

• Cost of treating skin cancer is skyrocketing (United States)

Skin cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer in the United States and in the past few years has become a growing public health problem. Not only is the number of skin cancer cases growing, the cost of treating the diseaseis surging.

Source: Consumer Affairs 

Melanoma & Skin Cancer News Round Up: 14/11/2014

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• Two Bristol-Myers Squibb drugs approved by Scottish Medicines Consortium

Yervoy (ipilimumab), has been accepted for use in adult patient in Scotland with previously-untreated advanced melanoma. Data has shown ipilimumab has the potential to improve the overall survival of some patients with unreselectable or metastatic melanoma, whether they have received prior therapy or not.

Source: The Pharma Letter 

• Thin melanomas cause greater number of deaths

More people are dying from melanomas thinner than a dime than from the thicker cancerous skin lesions long thought to be more dangerous, according to a new study from Queensland, Australia.

Source: Reuters 

• Melanoma Risk Genetic Testing May Help With Prevention

Positive genetic risk information about melanoma may help to prompt people to discuss melanoma risk with a wider variety of family members, according to a study published in JAMA that examined the effects of hypothetical genetic testing. Interestingly, even people who received negative genetic testing results were still affected by the results.

Source: Cancer Network 

• MelaFind: Spotting Melanoma Without a Biopsy

More than 76-thousand Americans will be diagnosed with melanoma this year. If it’s not caught early, this type of skin cancer can be deadly. Doctors used to rely on biopsies to make a diagnosis, but now there’s a much less painful way. Spotting melanoma is easier than ever.

Source: Ksat 

• Next-Gen Melanoma Drug Excels in Lab Tests

A University of Colorado Cancer Center study published online in the journal Molecular Cancer Therapeutics reports anti-cancer activity in 10 out of 11 patient tumor samples grown in mice and treated with the experimental drug TAK-733, a small molecule inhibitor of MEK1/2. While the drug is conceived as a second-generation inhibitor in patients harboring the BRAF mutation, the study shows drug activity in melanoma models regardless of BRAF mutation status. Treated tumors shrunk up to 100%.

Source: DDD Mag 

• High tech treatment of that "skin" cancer, Melanoma

A blog from Donna Jeanne for Chicago Now. Donna is a Stage IV Melanoma patient who's goal is to teach others about the dangers of melanoma and the best protection.

Source: Chicago Now 

• This App Can Detect Skin Cancer In 7 Out Of 10 Cases: Here's How It Works

Treating melanoma in the UK costs more than £100 million every year, but the skin cancer can be treated easily and at less cost if detected in advance. An app developed by a team from Romania's University of Bucharest, called SkinVision, provides a new weapon against the disease, with an ability to detect melanoma with an accuracy of 73% using only a picture.

Source: UK Business Insider 

• Richie Benaud: Cricket commentator receiving radiation treatment for skin cancer

Cricket commentator Richie Benaud has revealed that he’s receiving radiation therapy to treat skin cancer just a year after he suffered serious injuries following a car crash.

Source: Independent 

• Skin Cancer Costs Soar Compared to Other Malignancies: CDC

The cost of skin cancer treatment in the United States more than doubled between 2002 and 2011, and rose five times faster than treatments for other cancers, a new study found.

Source: Consumer Healthday 

Melanoma & Skin Cancer News Round Up: 07/11/2014

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• Melanoma Survival Better With Immune Booster

Patients with metastatic melanoma who were treated with ipilimumab, an immune checkpoint blocker, survived 50% longer – a median 17.5 months vs. 12.7 months – if they simultaneously received an immune stimulant, according to a study led by Dana-Farber Cancer Institute scientists.

Source: DDD Mag 

• University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute to open Melanoma Tissue Bank

From autism to prostate cancer, researchers rely on specialized banks of donated human tissue to explore how diseases attack the body and what might stop them.

Source: Trib Live  

• Nine weeks of biochemotherapy effective for high-risk melanoma

A 9-week course of multiagent biochemotherapy markedly improved relapse-free survival in patients with high-risk melanoma, compared with the 1-year course of high-dose interferon that has been the unchallenged standard of care for this disease for decades, according to a report published online Oct. 27 in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

Source: Oncology Practice 

• Uveal Melanoma Successfully Treated with Lower Doses of Radiation

Rare as it is, uveal melanoma–or cancer in the eye involving the iris, cilliary body, or choroid–is the most common primary cancer of the eye, according to the National Cancer Institute. Treatment of uveal melanoma is achieved with radiation therapy, although a variety of regimens and techniques have been applied successfully. A new retrospective study performed by researchers at Duke University, “Uveal Melanoma Treated with Iodine-125 Episcleral Plaque: An Analysis of Dose on Disease Control and Visual Outcomes,” identified 69 Gy of radiation applied at the tumor apex to be sufficient to control tumor growth and enhance distant metastasis-free survival.

Source: Radiation Therapy News 

• New study finds school uniform alterations could reduce risk of skin cancer in school children

A new study has found that lowering the hemlines on school uniforms could reduce the risk of skin cancer.

The research, which comes from James Cook University in Queensland, found that increasing the average uniform covering to the knees and elbows could increase sun protection by over 9 per cent.

Source: Daily Mail 

• New Pain Free Technology Detects Skin Cancer

Now, there's an easier, pain-free way to check suspicious moles, called MelaFind. 

"It really helps us decide which lesions need to be biopsied," said Dr. Philip Bailin, a dermatologist at Cleveland Clinic.

The test takes less than a minute. The scanner transmits 10 different wavelengths of light into the skin and takes an image of the patient's mole. That image is compared to others in a database of more than 10,000 lesions.

Source: ABC 7