I am not a morning person. I blame that on the fact that I was born around noon and my internal clock was then set for me to be an afternoon-type person. So, I missed the recent story on the Today Show (which airs when I’m still stumbling around semi-coherently in the morning getting ready for work) about an Austin woman… Read more »
In a recent news story out of Tampa, a widow describes how she lost her husband to amelanotic melanoma. Spreading from a lesion on his calf into the lymph system, the cancer ended up claiming the man’s life after a 3-year battle against the disease. He had a lump in his groin that signified the spread of the cancer and… Read more »
I got all alliterative on the title there… but I’m really excited to share a story I read about research that uses a compound treatment to target melanoma cells but spares the healthy skin cells. The research was led by two scientists working out of Penn State College of Medicine and was recently published in the European Journal of Medicinal Chemistry. As noted… Read more »
As readers of the blog may know, I live in Austin. Our local television station ran a story about a new radiation-based skin cancer treatment that sounded interesting. The treatment is an FDA approved non-surgical treatment called Superficial Radiation. The claim is that the treatment destroys skin cancer cells without damaging healthy tissue. For maximum effectiveness, you need 8-10 treatments, which last… Read more »
My blog received a follow from a fellow blogger, Mississippi Meow who writes the Chronicles of Nowhereland. Of course, I check out everyone else’s blogs because – let’s face it, I’m curious about other people, and particularly those who find their way to my little spot in the interwebs. What motivates them to learn more about pink melanoma? Like I… Read more »
My previous post talked about the history of using the immune T-cells in the fight against cancer. I’m picking up the thread of the story where the human experiments began… A small pharmaceutical company approached by researcher Jim Allison, Medarex, decided to begin human trials using patients diagnosed with malignant melanoma. Melanoma sometimes responds to immunotherapy treatment. The first experiments… Read more »
Disclaimer: I’m a science nerd. I love the compilations like the Best American Science and Nature Writing. I got the 2013 edition out of the library and there was an article, originally published in The New Yorker, entitled The T-Cell Army. The article discussed the history of Dr. William Coley, a surgeon in 1890s New York City who lost a… Read more »
A few days ago, I celebrated a milestone of sorts. It’s been nine months since the excision. I’m in San Francisco for work and have been doing quite a bit of walking this past week. The scar still aches at times, and if I’m going uphill, it can be somewhat sharp. And when I get off the elliptical, it seems… Read more »
There was a report on the Iowa Public Radio recently that shows that the rates of melanoma are dramatically increasing. According to the Director of the University of Iowa’s Holden Comprehensive Cancer Center, Dr. George Weiner, the increase can be considered an epidemic. Now, Iowa is not exactly Florida, right? So what is causing this tremendous increase? Dr. Weiner notes that… Read more »
Because of my diagnosis of melanoma late last year, I find myself reading information about the disease. Sometimes, I stumble across information I had no idea even existed. Today, I came across an article that highlighted the efforts of researchers at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. Since I live in Texas, I’m always interested in what the… Read more »