How to pronounce “melanoma”(noun) in English

melanoma um and here in this particular subset uh the ages are shifted a little bit to the right so these are older

melanoma so if that's the case in melanoma what might be the biological uh features that would distinguish a young

melanoma so again when we start to take a look at these big epidemiologic Trends and put data from thousands and

melanoma specifically how do we move from biology like that to treatment so I mentioned before one of

melanoma we based hos 2 with this vague idea that maybe the immune system could be active in treating cancers like

melanoma so how might it work well it's right here um you can see at the top we

melanoma cell and essentially cause cancer all of these little uh uh classes

melanoma um and each of the lines is an individual patient so the zero of the dash line would be if you took the

melanoma leading to a difference in treatment how does that relate to young people in age Well turns out if you look

melanoma uh risk in a good way um just published last week vitamin D

person melanoma from an older person melanoma and in this graph this is a graph of the incidence of melanoma based

talking about melanoma um but before I do that let me start where Shannon left

adult cancer and where melanoma fits in uh this is uh uh not to scale but is

always cutaneous uh melanoma and and it's predominantly in Caucasians U but not exclusively in

approved drugs for melanoma uh were developed

for metastatic melanoma are still alive so it can be a very valuable therapy it's a toxic therapy as well uh but this

Sun's bad for melanoma yet vitamin D that can come from sun exposure might be good for cancer and even good

specifically for melanoma and in fact there were studies published and often

decrease in mortality from melanoma so it's not actually as as straightforward as as that how about sunscreen so sunscreen is

fits exactly with the concepts of melanoma and with young adult cancer which is a a big uh mission in the

ovarian cancer in women thyroid cancer and melanoma

that we're learning about melanoma now this is a cartoon of a melanoma cell across the top is a cell membrane and

left Peak it may be that younger melanoma has unique biology that we can Target all right um I am a physician as

knows that Sons associated with melanoma that you wear sunscreen stay out of the sun etc etc uh but we've been saying

it actually reduced their incidence of melanoma um so that's confusing because

with a decrease risk of death from melanoma both sunburns uh High

And this is a patient with very advanced melanoma.

This is an example of a tumor called malignant melanoma metastatic.

there's about 60,000 new cases of melanoma diagnosed in the United States each year predominantly that's a skin

Caucasians uh importantly for the young adult population melanoma is rapidly On The Rise um especially in females so

so let's focus in more on young adult melanoma uh this is kind of an

and an older person's hodkin lymphoma so what about melanoma now this isn't quite as

neck um uh and if you think about sun exposure and melanoma head and neck is probably where that's going to take

the FDA one of the two FDA approved treatments for metastatic melanoma is actually a hormone an immune-based

membrane of the cell and uh that can be found in melanoma and can trigger these

mutation so when we go back to what's different about melanoma and young adults and what's different about that

otherwise high-risk population in the incidence of melanoma but this is probably the best study done uh where patients were

patients but again you see there seems to be a younger person's melanoma relative in an older person's

a pill you take and you give it to patients with metastatic melanoma well this was just presented last month actually earlier this month

at the distribution of this biological feature of B raft mutations in melanoma it's much more common in young adults so

So patients with lung cancer, colorectal, melanoma, GIST tumors, thyroid, and patients with diffuse gliomas, which are brain cancers.

young adults and in females it's uh number four but represents about 12% of cancers in young adults few other details about melanoma

phenomenon uh that was described by Johan clemenson called clemenson hook this is a graph not a melanoma but of

standard of care um and this is what's called the Kaplan Meer survival curve for melanoma metastatic melanoma treated

vertical is when the intervention ended uh and then they were followed for the incidence of melanoma over the next 10

And ultimately in a randomized study, we were able to show that this drug, if you give it to patients with melanoma who

from breast cancer, colon cancer, prostate cancer, skin cancer, such as melanoma.

And there's a lot of epidemiology comparing people who go in the sun and out of the sun uh showing that even after having a melanoma for example, people who go in the sun have a better immune