Melanoma

BACKGROUND: Somali immigrants and refugees constitute one of the largest African ethnic groups immigrating to the United States over the past three decades with the majority resettling in the state of Minnesota. Previous studies have documented significant cancer screening disparities between the Somali population and the general population. However, little is known about cancer incidence among Somali groups living in the United States. METHODS: We determined the incidence of 18 types or sites of malignancy using ICD-9 and ICD-10 codes and compared them between Somali and non-Somali populations in Olmsted County, Minnesota utilizing the Rochester Epidemiology Project medical records-linkage infrastructure for the years 2000-2020...

Thirty-four phytochemicals were isolated from dry tubers of Bletilla striata Rchb.f. The compounds were classified as bibenzyls 1 - 14 , dihydrophenanthrenes 15 , 17 , 20 , 21 , phenanthrenes 16 , 18 , 19 , simple benzoids 22 - 24 , a fatty acid 25 , glucosyloxybenzyl 2-isobutylmalates 26 - 32 , and glucosyloxybenzyl cinnamates 33 , 34 . Compounds 1 - 4 , 7 , 8 , 11 , 12 , and 16 inhibited melanogenesis (17.96-55.27%) induced by α-MSH in B16F10 cells at 10-40 μM. However, compounds 9 , 10 , 17 , 18 , and 21 exhibited significant cytotoxicity against melanomas, with IC50 values of 12-34 μM...

Association with hypomethylating agents is a promising strategy to improve the efficacy of immune checkpoint inhibitors-based therapy. The NIBIT-M4 was a phase Ib, dose-escalation trial in patients with advanced melanoma of the hypomethylating agent guadecitabine combined with the anti-CTLA-4 antibody ipilimumab that followed a traditional 3 + 3 design (NCT02608437). Patients received guadecitabine 30, 45 or 60 mg/m2 /day subcutaneously on days 1 to 5 every 3 weeks starting on week 0 for a total of four cycles, and ipilimumab 3 mg/kg intravenously starting on day 1 of week 1 every 3 weeks for a total of four cycles...

Molecular indicators of long-term survival (LTS) in response to immune-checkpoint inhibitor (ICI) treatment have the potential to provide both mechanistic and therapeutic insights. In this study, we construct predictive models of LTS following ICI therapy based on data from 158 clinical trials involving 21,023 patients of 25 cancer types with available 1-year overall survival (OS) rates. We present evidence for the use of 1-year OS rate as a surrogate for LTS. Based on these and corresponding TCGA multi-omics data, total neoantigen, metabolism score, CD8+ T cell, and MHC_score were identified as predictive biomarkers...

BACKGROUND: Tumor staging is crucial for melanoma, of which acral melanoma is the predominant subtype in Asians. 18F-fluoro-2-deoxyglucose (FDG) positron emission tomography (PET) and 18F-FDG-PET/computed tomography (18F-FDG-PET/CT) serve as non-invasive imaging tools for tumor staging. However, the literature is scarce on the diagnostic value of PET for acral melanoma. METHODS: From January 1, 2006, to November 30, 2022, a total of 352 patients were diagnosed with melanoma at our hospital...

INTRODUCTION: Previous studies have established that geographic location strongly influences health literacy, access to care, and health outcomes across all disease types. There are many well-understood risk factors for the development of melanoma, and likewise various markers of disease severity. However, few studies have been conducted to determine what role locality and access to dermatological care play in both the incidence and severity of melanoma, particularly in South Dakotans...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

BACKGROUND: Mohs micrographic surgery (MMS) provides optimal margin control through complete peripheral and deep margin assessment. The treatment of melanoma using MMS has historically been limited by difficulty in interpreting melanocytes using frozen sections. Immunohistochemical (IHC) staining, a technique whereby chromogen-tagged antibodies are used to detect antigens of interest, has revolutionized the surgical treatment of melanoma. OBJECTIVES: This article provides an update and literature review of current IHC stains used in MMS for melanoma, their sensitivities and specificities, and clinical outcomes...

The treatment of metastatic uveal melanoma remains a major clinical challenge. Procaspase-3, a proapoptotic protein and precursor to the key apoptotic executioner caspase-3, is overexpressed in a wide range of malignancies, and the drug PAC-1 leverages this overexpression to selectively kill cancer cells. Herein, we investigate the efficacy of PAC-1 against uveal melanoma cell lines and report the synergistic combination of PAC-1 and entrectinib. This preclinical activity, tolerability data in mice, and the known clinical effectiveness of these drugs in human cancer patients led to a small Phase 1b study in patients with metastatic uveal melanoma...

Cocultivation of the fungi Penicillium brasilianum MST-FP1927 and Aspergillus nomius MST-FP2004 resulted in the reciprocal induction of two new compounds, miktospiromide A ( 1 ) from A . nomius and kitrinomycin A ( 2 ) from P . brasilianum . A third new compound, kitrinomycin B ( 3 ), was also identified from an axenic culture of P . brasilianum , along with the previously reported compounds austalide K ( 4 ), 17 S -dihydroaustalide K ( 5 ), verruculogen ( 6 ), and fumitremorgin B ( 7 ). The structures of 1 - 3 were elucidated by detailed spectroscopic analysis and DFT calculations, while 4 - 7 were identified by comparison to authentic standards...

Undifferentiated monocytes can be loaded with tumor antigens (Ag) and administered intravenously to induce antitumor cytotoxic T lymphocyte (CTL) responses. This vaccination strategy exploits an endogenous Ag cross-presentation pathway, where Ag-loaded monocytes (monocyte vaccines) transfer their Ag to resident splenic dendritic cells (DC), which then stimulate robust CD8+ CTL responses. In this study, we investigated whether monocyte vaccination in combination with CDX-301, a DC-expanding cytokine Fms-like tyrosine kinase 3 ligand (Flt3L), could improve the antitumor efficacy of anti-programmed cell death (anti-PD-1) immune checkpoint blockade...

BACKGROUND: The influence of the novel human coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic on skin cancer characteristics in Latin America is still poorly elucidated. METHODS: This was a cross-sectional study which included patients diagnosed with skin cancer (basal cell carcinoma [BCC], cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma [cSCC], and primary cutaneous melanoma [cMM]) during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic (from March 1, 2020, to February 28, 2021) and the preceding year at our institution...

Conventional chemotherapy methods have adverse off-target effects and low therapeutic efficiencies of drug release in target tumors. In this study, we proposed a combination therapy of doxorubicin (DOX)-loaded ultrasound (US)-sensitive liposomal nanocarriers (IMP301), microbubbles (MBs) under focused US exposure using convex acoustic lens-attached US (LENS) to tumor treatment. The therapeutic effects of each treatment in a murine melanoma model were evaluated using contrast-enhanced US (CEUS) and micro-computed tomography (micro-CT) imaging, bioluminescence and confocal microscopy imaging, and liquid chromatography-mass spectroscopy (LC/MS) analysis...

OBJECTIVE: To conduct an analytical review of the available literature data on thermoneutral «dry immersion» (TSI) - a method that simulates the state of weightlessness/microgravity. MATERIAL AND METHODS: The review included data from electronic databases: Scopus, Web of Science, MedLine, Wiley, World Health Organization, The Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, ScienceDirect, PubMed, elibrary, CyberLeninka, disserCat. RESULTS: The extensive database of in vitro studies contains information on the reduction of cell proliferation, invasion, migration and increased apoptosis of thyroid, breast, lung, stomach, colon cancer cells, Hodgkin's lymphoma, glioblastoma, leukemia, melanoma, osteosarcoma of a human under the influence of microgravity...

Cytotoxic CD8 + T cell (CTL) exhaustion is driven by chronic antigen stimulation. Reversing CTL exhaustion with immune checkpoint blockade (ICB) has provided clinical benefits in different types of cancer. We, therefore, investigated whether modulating chronic antigen stimulation and T-cell receptor (TCR) signaling with an IL2-inducible T-cell kinase (ITK) inhibitor, could confer ICB responsiveness to ICB resistant solid tumors. In vivo intermittent treatment of 3 ICB-resistant solid tumor (melanoma, mesothelioma or pancreatic cancer) with ITK inhibitor significantly improved ICB therapy...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

Malignant melanoma of the gall bladder is rare. Most cases are metastatic and primary gall bladder melanoma is even more rare. We report a case of primary malignant melanoma of the gall bladder which illustrates the diagnostic challenge posed by this condition. Histopathology and immunohistochemistry play a pivotal role in making a diagnosis and ruling out conditions which mimic it such as xanthogranulomatous cholecystitis and other relatively common epithelial malignancies. We tested for prognostic and predictive markers including BRAF and PD-L1 and immunohistochemistry showed positive staining for BRAF...

BACKGROUND: Pigmentation could be a relevant prognostic factor in uveal melanoma (UM) development. Microphthalmia-associated transcription factor (MITF) regulates melanin synthesis by activating tyrosinase-related protein 2 (TYRP2) and silver protein (SILV) that induce the melanogenesis pathway. Although their oncogenic potential has been observed in various malignancies but has not been investigated in UM Asian population. Our aim is to study the ultrastructure of melanosomes and the prognostic significance of pigmentation markers such as TYRP2, MITF and SILV in UM...

BACKGROUND: Accurate risk stratification of uveal melanoma (UM) patients is important for determining the interval and frequency of surveillance. Loss of BAP1 expression has been shown to be strongly associated with UM-related death and metastasis. METHODS: In this study of 164 enucleated UMs, we assessed the prognostic role of preferentially expressed antigen in melanoma (PRAME) expression and Ki67 proliferation index measured by digital quantitation using QuPath programme in patients with BAP1-positive and BAP1-loss UMs...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.