Medical Minute 6-27: Treating Melanoma With DNA

Thirty years ago, doctors removed a cancerous tumor from Sosnowicz's leg and told him he was cured.

"Last April or May, I was driving home, and I put my hand on my thigh. Right here, next to the excision spot, I felt what I thought was a lipoma -- a fatty tumor."

Doctor Lynn Schuchter is a melanoma expert at the University of Pennsylvania. She says the biggest breakthrough in decades may lie within a patient's DNA. Forty percent of the patients with melanoma have a broken gene-called the B-RAF gene.

"What's really exciting is that there are new drugs -- new inhibitors -- that target these genes. They can put the brakes on these rapidly-dividing cells," said Lynn Schuchter, M.D., Chief of Hematology and Oncology Abramson Cancer Center at the University of Pennsylvania.

In some patients, whose tumors have a broken B-RAF gene, the inhibitors even shrink tumors by 50 percent or more.

"Three days after taking the drug, I wake up on my left-hand side, and I don't have this discomfort in my stomach. I move over to my right, and I don't have it."

Doctor Schuchter says while patients have had tremendous results, eventually, the melanoma cells may become resistant. The next step? Combining the B-RAF inhibitor with other therapies -- and ultimately -- find a cure. Hope keeps Michael Sosnowicz strong. Hope ... and his family.

"I want them to be fighters just like me."

For more information on other series produced by Ivanhoe Broadcast News contact John Cherry at (407) 691-1500, jcherry@ivanhoe.com.

_______________________________________________ MEDICAL BREAKTHROUGHS - RESEARCH SUMMARY:

BACKGROUND: Melanoma, the most serious type of skin cancer, develops in the cells that produce melanin -- the pigment that gives your skin its color. Melanoma can also form in your eyes and, rarely, in internal organs, such as your intestines. Melanoma accounts for less than 5 percent of skin cancer cases but a majority of skin cancer deaths. Melanoma is the fifth most common cancer among men and the seventh most common cancer in women. Sometimes, melanoma is found in children and teenagers. The exact cause of all melanoma is not clear, but exposure to ultraviolet (UV) radiation from sunlight or tanning lamps and beds increases your risk of developing the cancer. Other factors, such as your genetic makeup, likely also play a role. (SOURCE: Mayo Clinic)

STANDARD TREATMENT: People with melanoma may have surgery, chemotherapy, biological therapy, or radiation therapy. Patients may have a combination of treatments. At any stage of disease, people with melanoma may have treatment to control pain and other symptoms of the cancer to relieve the side effects of therapy and to ease emotional and practical problems. This kind of treatment is called symptom management, supportive care, or palliative care. (SOURCE: Medicinenet.

Multiple Lipoma Treatment

72 Years ago today was the Western Stagecoach premiere. In Germany, the film had the somewhat silly title rental hellish trip to Santa Fe . The film marked the beginning of the career of John Wayne, although that was actually many years in the Western business. But most were quickly turned the B-Pictures. His role in the feature-length film Raoul Walsh The Big Trail in 1930 brought surprisingly not a breakthrough. At that time, America obviously needs no national hero, with which one could identify with. In 1939 you need the. The previously low estimate of Western film genre is now to get precious Western and (at least in the interpretation of Mr McBride and Wilmington in her book on John Ford) has a new symbolic dimension: The coach is America, a nation of exiles , riven with warring factions and contradictory, the Indians are the wild forces of nature, the pregnant woman is Liberty, the banker is the corrupt Republican establishment, the spokesman for selfish individualism, the benevolent sheriff riding shotgun is Roosevelt, the Plummer gang are the Axis powers; Buck, the driver, and his Mexican wife 'Hoolietta' are the ethnic minorities Which give the country its democratic character. The entire American society as a microcosm in a Grand Hotel on Wheels on the way to Lordsburg, the city of the Lord. But where John Wayne is in this concept? He is probably the American Adam, a natural gentleman a primitivist ideal figure. He has no ticket for the Wells Fargo coach by Tonto to Lordsburg solved, he is suddenly there, alone in Monument Valley. Where to play all the Westerns of John Ford. He should be buried in Monument Valley , Woody Strode had said when he learned of the death of John Ford. The Winchester by John Wayne in this scene holds in his hand while he Hold it! says has not disappeared in any props. She is now in the John Wayne Room of National Cowboy Hall of Fame and Western Heritage Center in Oklahoma City . I play John Wayne in every picture regardless of the character, and I have been doing all right, have not I? , John Wayne once said. Perhaps because he speaks so little. John Ford has the director Robert Parrish (who had studied with him as an editor) once asked: Take a piece of paper and count the number of times Duke talks in 'Stagecoach' and in 'The Long Voyage Home'! The number in both cases was fourteen. That's how you make 'em good actors. Do not let any of 'em talk!