No one likes to admit that they’re doing something wrong. God knows, I used to be the poster child for saying, “well it’s wrong only if you look at it that way (i.e. probably the correct way but I’ll be damned if I say otherwise)”. I think most self-aware people recognize that as you have more and more life experience,… Read more »
The immune system is an incredible evolutionary machine, designed to protect us from the ravages of bacteria, viruses, and other harmful microbes. But admittedly, there are some times when the immune system doesn’t work the way it is supposed to, giving rise to auto-immune disorders. And now scientists have demonstrated how a hijack of the immune system from melanoma cells… Read more »
Immunotherapy is helping cancer patients, including those with melanoma, to more successfully fight their diseases. However, a new study released in this month’s Cancer Discovery highlights the fact that a more personalized approach could be even more successful. Brief background… immunotherapy works by activating the body’s T cells to find and destroy cancer cells. Obviously, this only works if the T… Read more »
The 2018 NCRI Cancer Conference recently wrapped up in Glasgow, Scotland. One of the most disheartening research results reported is the fact that the rate of men dying from melanoma has risen around the world. So, you might ask, isn’t the rate of melanoma death rates rising anyway? Well, in some countries the death rates are steady or even falling for… Read more »
Scientists know that melanoma has a genetic component – mutations have been found in up to 40% of families with a high rate of melanoma. If you have a first-degree relative with melanoma, you are 2-3 times more likely to develop the disease. And the more relatives you have with melanoma, the risk rate increases drastically. There are several genes… Read more »
Immunotherapy has been featured a lot on this blog because of the potential to dramatically improve the survival rates of cancer patients, including those struck by melanoma. Obviously, I’m not the only one excited about the progress made in this field. This year’s Nobel Prize in medicine was awarded to two immunology researchers – Dr. James Allison of the MD… Read more »
I know I post a lot of stories about immunotherapy. The potential for that type of treatment could revolutionize how we fight melanoma. But a new study caught my eye and it’s definitely an intriguing avenue of research. Some melanoma tumors arise from a mutation in the BRAF gene, most common type being the V600E (but there are other mutation… Read more »
There has been a flurry of news reports regarding a study recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that claims scientists may have developed a vaccine that when used in conjunction with other cancer therapies increases the chances of melanoma survival rates. The researchers developed a so-called cancer vaccine and then decided to look at whether using a combination… Read more »
It seems like every other day, my Google News alert regarding melanoma research lights up with another advance using immunotherapy. This one comes from a team at UCLA who combined immunotherapy with an experimental sequence of nucleic acids that mimics a bacterial infection. The researchers provided 22 people who had inoperable or advanced metastasized melanoma an immunotherapy drug called pembrolizumab… Read more »
When I wrote my previous blog post about checkpoint inhibitor immunotherapy, I didn’t realize that Phase 2 of the clinical trials were being released later on that day. Researchers at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center (here in the Lone Star State) performed clinical trial checkpoint inhibitor immunotherapy in 94 patients with melanoma that had spread to the… Read more »