GLG News by Skin Cancer Oncologists (US)

The medical and scientific worlds lost a great man when Dr. Judah Folkman recently passed away. His work in anti-angiogenesis was very inspiring and created a whole new area of scientific research to fight cancer, which eventually led to new drugs and treatments, principally Avastin. Dr. Folkman was...

The announcement by Wellpoint that it will offer online evaluations of doctors and their offices is very interesting. Using a tool developed by Zagat's, patients in targest markets will be able to rate their physician "experience" on several unspecified factors, presumably dealing with things like doctor/office...

Interleukin-21, or IL-21, is a protein that regulates immunomodulatory cell function. It appears to stimulate the activity of NK cells and cytotoxic T cells, which may be particularly relevant in targeting cancers that more responsive to the immune system, such as melanoma and renal cell carcinoma....

Uveal melanoma, although similar histologically to the more common cutaneous melanoma, is virtually a completely different disease. Once metastatic, it has failed to respond to any form of systemic therapy, even those with some (albeit limited) efficacy in "standard" melanoma. Its relative rarity and...

This press release discusses Phase IIa results from a novel melanoma vaccine in a small group of patients with various levels of melanoma. Only 22 patients were treated in this study that began about two years ago. Fourteen patients developed specific activation of cytotoxic T cells that recognize...

This study is interesting because it uses gene expression profile data to choose the tumor target. Specifically, preclinical work looking at PARP expression in various tumor types identified that breast cancers negative for estrogen, progesterone, and HER2 expression were much more likely to overexpress...

M-Vax, an autologous tumor vaccine modified by treatment with HNP, has been proposed as a potential treatment for advanced melanoma. Prior trials that I am aware of were non-randomized and therefore could not be compared to other types of therapy. The majority of the earlier trials were in Stage III...

This Phase II study of a novel dendritic cell melanoma vaccine shows a significant yet not overwhelming response rate of just under 10%. An additional 20% of patients had stable disease. The progression free survival is in-line with other recent melanoma studies in this population as is the 1 year survival....

Asuragen is a contract lab with apparently high capabilities in gene expression profiling, miRNA detection, and other molecular diagnostic techniques. This news item announces a business arrangement between Merck and Asuragen, to develop a biomarker assay using pharmacogenomics for use in cancer clinical...

This article reports on two related prospective studies of Remicade treatment for refractory ulcerative colitis. The data suggest that Remicade therapy reduces the short term (one year) need for colon surgery in these difficult to treat patients. Further follow-up is needed to better understand the...