Those of us not blessed with a high-octane metabolism already know the battle with fat cells is a miserable trench-warfare slog through the produce aisle. But new research from Tel Aviv University gives us even more reason to be suspicious of those fat cells. Apparently, they are implicated in the transition that surface-level melanoma cells undergo when they metastasize. The… Read more »
Ok, as I was typing that title, I was thinking to myself, didn’t I got to high school with Clark Breslow? But actually, his first name is Nate. Hopefully he never needs to read a blog about melanoma, but if he does – what’s up dude? Still got your skateboard? Anyway, for those of you that actually come to this… Read more »
In my previous post, I talked about the new changes to the guidelines for diagnosing and treating melanoma. One of the changes affects the definitions of melanoma stages. But I realized as I was talking about those changes that some people may not know what all of those letters and numbers mean. To complicate matters further, there are actually a… Read more »
I’ve had this tab open on my browser for some time, waiting for the day that my headache would subside enough for me to write. But seeing as I will likely have a permanent headache for the foreseeable future (and yes, I did go to a doctor and they told me basically that it was all in my head –… Read more »
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 »
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 »
As I have mentioned a few times in this blog, melanoma has a disconcerting tendency to spread to the lungs, liver, and brain when it enters into the metastasizing stages. And brain tumors like that are pretty darn hard to treat. Most of the current treatments don’t really provide much benefit to patients. And once melanoma metastasizes, only about half… Read more »
If you follow the news regarding advancements in melanoma detection and treatment as much as I do, you may have seen the news story that researchers in Australia have been working on developing a blood test that could identify early-stage melanoma. This is really exciting news because as we all know, the earlier you detect melanoma, the better the odds… Read more »
I check one of those “days of the month” calendars to see if there’s anything fun I can use for the Twitter account I maintain at work (because I’m trying to not be all corporate-y all the time, even though I probably will get in trouble someday for the funny memes I post since I am positive the brand team… Read more »
Being consistent with good eating habits, drinking those glasses of water, and exercising is supposed to be good for you (I wouldn’t know because I’m unable to do all three of those things consistently). But in melanoma treatment, consistency may not always be a good thing, at least according to recently published research. Combining various drug treatments has been at… Read more »