Promising new melanoma treatment
There might be some good news in the fight against melanoma – as long as doctors are able to replicate the success they’ve had with one remarkable patient. With a unique and experimental immune system treatment, doctors used a patient’s own cells to bring the advance of melanoma to a grinding halt.
This new treatment caused the melanoma of a 52-year-old man to disappear for two years. Incredibly, this man’s melanoma had, at the time of the treatment, metastasized to one of his lungs and- worse yet – one of his lymph nodes.
Dr. Cassian Yee, one of the researchers who worked on the new treatment, says that the patient is “still doing well without any symptoms.”
In this unique immunotherapy technique, doctors took immune system cells called CD4+ T cells from the patient’s blood that targeted the man’s melanoma. These cells were separated and then cloned in a lab over the course of five months, and then five billion were infused back into the patient to fight the cancer.
Another benefit of this treatment is that the researchers didn’t see any side effects, which makes sense, since the treatment is basically the patient being injected with cells from his own body.
But – and you knew there had to be a but with a story this good – while the initial patient had such incredible success with the procedure, this “T-cell” treatment has since been used on eight other melanoma sufferers, none of whom experienced the same success. While there has been “some responses in the other patients,” Dr. Yee isn’t sure why the response has not been nearly as good as it was in the initial patient.
With promising but spotty results and a complex process, the T cell treatment is years from becoming mainstream. Still, Yee and other researchers at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center where the treatment research was conducted believe that the essential idea of treating melanoma with this technique could be very successful in the future.
I’m encouraged that other doctors are still out there trying new techniques and making some headway in the war against insidious, aggressive cancers like melanoma.
Melanoma rates on the rise
While we’re on the subject of melanoma, the American Academy of Dermatology just printed a study showing that melanoma rates have risen among women by 50 percent since 1980. And guess what everyone believes is to blame for this melanoma spike? The sun, of course.
According to the study’s author, Mark Purdue of the National Cancer Institute’s Division of Cancer Epidemiology & Genetics, these new statistics are proof that the campaigns to educate the public about the dangers of tanning “do not appear to have resulted in a reduction of melanoma rates among young women.”
There’s a good reason for that: it’s because tanning has NOTHING TO DO WITH CAUSING MELANOMAS!
Melanomas are the result of exposure to artificial light and a lack of exposure to the sun. In fact, studies have shown that the dose of vitamin D that you get from exposure to sunlight can actually help to increase the survival rate from melanoma. And to top it off, melanomas are usually discovered on parts of the anatomy that aren’t typically exposed to sunlight.
And yet these higher rates of melanomas among young women are being misinterpreted as a “warning sign” that girls are disregarding common sense doctors’ advice for the sake of beauty and a good, dark tan.
In fact, the constant harangue during the summer months to slather on those water- resistant, high SPF sunscreens – what I like to call “basement in a bottle” – could actually be doing more to cause melanoma than anything else. Other research has found that people with a higher incidence of solar elastosis – the scientific term for the increased wrinkling of the skin (which IS, sorry to say, a side effect of increased sun exposure) had a DECREASED incidence of melanomas. Hmmm I wonder if this has something to do with the fact that sunlight can actually battle melanoma?
Turns out the only thing those “protective” sunscreens may be protecting you from is a long and healthy life.
