skin cancer
A common antibacterial and antifungal ingredient used in mouthwashes and tooth paste may have another positive medicinal use: protection against skin cancer. According to new studies, sanguinarine was shown to enhance production of proteins that induce cell death, or apoptosis, in cells damaged by ultraviolet-B (UVB) radiation. The alkaloid also restricts skin cell production of other pro-proliferation proteins. ''This natural compound may protect skin from cells that acquire the genetic damage caused by UV radiation from advancing toward cancer.''
Blondes and redheads not only are more susceptible to skin cancer, but the source of their skin and hair pigmentation, melanin, actually magnifies the damaging effects of ultraviolet (UV) rays, according to a study published online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Melanin filters out UV radiation, but the melanin in hair follicles, particularly in light hair, actually increases the sun damaging effects of UV rays and causes cell death in the hair follicle, said Douglas Brash, principal investigator and professor of therapeutic radiology, genetics and dermatology at Yale School of Medicine.
Mayo Clinic and British researchers have developed a new approach to cancer vaccines that purposely kills healthy skin cells to target the immune system against tumors. The new approach has eradicated skin cancer tumors in mice. The approach and results challenge conventional thinking on the creation of cancer vaccines. Their report on the ''heat shock'' vaccine therapy appears in the August issue of Nature Biotechnology. Results are promising because multiple rounds of treatment eradicated skin cancer in all the mice in the study. If this work can be extended to humans, it could have enormous benefits.
Dorothy Fahland says she was as a typical blue-eyed blonde with freckles growing up on Long Island, N.Y. She spent her days playing on the beach and sailing with friends. "No one ever thought to wear sunscreen back then," she said. "As a teenager, the goal was to get as tan as possible, so I was in the sun a lot." Today Fahland, 72, of Olympia, Wash., regrets having spent her youth basking unprotected in the sun's harmful rays. She is one of 250,000 Americans each year who develop a form of skin cancer called squamous cell carcinoma. If caught early, squamous cell carcinoma typically doesn't spread, but if neglected or undiscovered for years, it can spread to other parts of the body, causing significant disfigurement and even death.
How well a patient's immune system reacts to his own cancer cells and the schedule by which the vaccine is given are two key factors in the success of a custom-made vaccine created from the cancer cells of patients with malignant melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer and fastest growing cancer in the United States. Nearly one-half ? 44 percent ? of malignant melanoma patients enrolled in a clinical trial who received the vaccine following standard surgery lived at least five years ? no small achievement, considering that only about 20 percent live that long with surgery alone.
An all over tan is fashionable and large numbers of people, especially young women, achieve this by using sunbeds. Professor Antony Young, of King's College London, has reviewed the evidence that links sunbed use to malignant melanoma; a skin cancer that is fatal if not detected and treated early. Malignant melanoma is a cancer of the skin's cells that are responsible for tanning (melanocytes). Unlike most cancers, that tend to occur in late middle age, malignant melanoma can appear in younger people.
Researchers from Ohio State University found that a common pain relief medication seems to increase the effectiveness of a drug used to treat skin cancer. Experiments in mice showed that the combination of celecoxib -- a prescription-only non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) -- and a cream commonly used to treat nonmelanoma skin cancer was up to 35 percent more effective in reducing the number of skin cancer tumors than treating such lesions with the cream alone.
It's been almost two decades since the American Academy of Dermatology (AAD) first asked the public what they know about skin cancer, sunscreens and sun exposure. Despite countless health messages about the dangers of the sun and the alarmingly high rates of skin cancer in the United States, the results of a new AAD survey show that Americans, particularly young individuals, recognize that overexposure to the sun is unhealthy but are still not protecting themselves when outdoors. However, as people age, attitudes towards sun safety begin to change ? not only for themselves but for the children in their care.
A New jersey researcher has discovered a gene responsible for melanoma, the most aggressive form of malignant skin cancer. Melanoma may appear in places that never see sun, spread to other parts of the body and become lethal. This type of cancer is not generally responsive to chemotherapy. Cancer Institute, in the United States the incidence rate of melanoma has more than doubled in the past 20 years.
The delicate interplay of two chemical signals coaxes stem cells into becoming hair follicles, according to new research by scientists at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at The Rockefeller University. The research has implications for understanding hair growth and hair-follicle development, and it may also help explain how diverse structures, such as teeth and lungs, are formed or how some forms of skin cancer develop.
A strong link exists between lifetime exposure to ultraviolet light, particularly lifetime sunburns, and the development of melanoma ? the most lethal form of skin cancer. Now, for the first time, scientists have identified a specific molecular pathway within cells that becomes mutated by ultraviolet light exposure, thereby speeding up melanoma development.
Researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute have made a discovery that could help solve a mystery in cancer biology: how a sunburn acquired during a childhood day at the beach can develop into a deadly tumor decades later. The scientists report in the Feb. 4 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that the sun's damaging ultraviolet (UV) rays target a series of biochemical signals inside the young skin cell, impairing the cell's ability to control its proliferation. The paper currently is available on the journal's web site.
Scientists have proven that ingredients in white tea are effective in boosting the immune function of skin cells and protecting them against the damaging effects of the sun. The discovery that white tea extract protects the skin from oxidative stress and immune cell damage adds another important element in the battle against skin cancer.
The federal government today published its biennial Report on Carcinogens, adding steroidal estrogens used in estrogen replacement therapy and oral contraceptives to its official list of "known" human carcinogens. This and 15 other new listings bring the total of substances in the report, "known" or "reasonably anticipated" to pose a cancer risk, to 228. Among the other new additions: wood dust and ultraviolet light.
Scientists at Emory University School of Medicine have identified a signaling pathway that is turned on when benign moles turn into early-stage malignant melanoma. The pathway could provide a new target for the diagnosis, prevention and treatment of the most lethal form of skin cancer. The research was reported in the December issue of the journal Clinical Cancer Research.
