For any of us who have known victims of melanoma, we realize that a cure or permanent solution and break through is needed. Well, it appears human scientists are now well on their way to solving this challenge once and for all. There are many cancers that are not death sentences, but late stage melanoma is, well, until now it seems, because scientists have made a rather incredible break through, which gives researchers looking for cures in other types of cancers a little bit of inspiration.
Not long ago, there was a great article which gives hope for victims of melanoma (deadliest form of skin cancer) in New Scientist. The article appeared in BioTech 'Being Human' category titled; "Skin cancer treatment: Biggest breakthrough in 30 years" on June 6, 2011 by Jessica Hamzelou. The article stated;
"Two new drugs for metastatic melanoma - the deadliest form of skin cancer - are being hailed as the biggest breakthrough therapies for cancer in the last 30 years. The drugs reduce tumour size, significantly increasing survival rates. Although melanoma can be cured if caught early enough, individuals in the late stages of the disease are only expected to survive for an average of six months. One of the two drugs - vemurafenib inhibits malignant skin tumors."
The human trials have yielded such remarkable results that late stage melanoma may not be a death sentence any longer using vemurafenib, and those who did not respond to it have another new drug called "dacarbazine" which has shown decent results too according to the USDA approval notes. All of this is excellent news for those who have been diagnosed with late-stage melanoma and have been sent home without hope.
According to Wikipedia and other sources it seems more than 160,000 people each year get melanoma, and about three-quarters of all skin cancer deaths are from this type of cancer. Damaging UV light is the cause of melanoma, and UV Sun Tanning beds have been reported to be a contributing cause as well. It can also run in families and if it runs in yours, you should be seeing a dermatologist occasionally to check you over and also do some online research on your own so you can spot such spots to see if you suspect they are cancerous.
Caught early, most cases are easily treatable if the tumor is removed properly. Late stage melanoma is completely serious, but now, it may not be a death sentence, as these drugs will be available very soon. Please consider all this and think on it.
Lance Winslow is a retired Founder of a Nationwide Franchise Chain, and now runs the Online Think Tank. Lance Winslow believes writing 23,500 articles by mid-day on June 23, 2011 is going to be difficult because all the letters on his keyboard are now worn off..
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