Melanoma is the most prevalent form of skin cancer and skin cancer is the most prevalent kind of cancer in the Western world. It begins in skin cells called melanocytes. Melanocytes are situated under the skin, which is made up of two layers: the epidermis on the outside and the dermis below that. To be precise, melanocytes are found in the lowest strata of the epidermis, but not really in the dermis...
A new vaccine developed to stimulate the immune system and attack cancer was recently found to have a modest benefit on patients with advanced melanoma. According to Dr. Douglas Schwartzentruber, cancer chief at Goshen health System in central Indiana, who also delivered the study results at a recent meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, says the idea is to help the immune system recognize the threat and provoke it to attack...
A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine reported a 52-year-old man with advanced skin cancer who was cured using his own cells which are cloned outside the patient's body. Scientists took cancer-fighting immune cells, cloned the cells, multiplied in the laboratory and put back in their billions to see if they could attack and kill the tumors...
A team of scientists that cloned Dolly the sheep have made genetically engineered chicken which would produce cancer-fighting drugs in their egg whites. The researchers, Dr. Helen Sang and colleagues from Roslin Biocenter in Edinburg developed the transgenic chicken by inserting the genes of useful proteins into the hen's gene for the production of therapeutic antibodies...
Immunology experts say immunotherapy is now becoming the fourth modality in the fight against cancer, joining other medical cures such as surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy. Dr. Steven A. Rosenberg and colleagues at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Md. used a gene therapy approach that transferred tumor-killing genes into the white blood cells of the patients with advanced melanoma, a rare type of skin cancer...
