Melanoma Articles

Real People

'I Choose to Be Positive': A Metastatic Melanoma Story Guided by Hope

In 2010, Mindi noticed that a mole on the left side of her chest was bleeding. She felt concerned, but not panicked; after all, the air outside in Salt Lake City, UT had been dry, the 22-year-old reasoned. It could just be dry skin. Still, she wanted to take the proper precautions, so she made an appointment with a dermatologist. When the doctor suggested they take a wait-and-see approach, Mindi wasn't comfortable with it. She wanted to be proactive. "I know my body best," she says. "My gut...

Living & Wellbeing

Why Raising Health Literate Children Is Important

Annlouise Assaf’s grandmother didn’t speak much English when she left Lebanon for the United States in the early 1900s. The language barrier forced Assaf and her siblings — who were just kids — to stand in as the chief interpreters during doctors’ appointments. As her grandma’s health hung in the balance, Assaf soon found herself juggling much more than two dialects. “The doctor would ask us all these questions,” recalls Assaf. “But first, we had to understand what the doctor was asking us.” T...

Living & Wellbeing

Know the Mutational Status of Your Cancer: Biomarker Testing in Metastatic Melanoma and Metastatic Colorectal Cancer

If you’ve recently been diagnosed with metastatic melanoma or metastatic colorectal cancer, chances are you’ve had to familiarize yourself with a lot of new terms and complicated concepts. One term you may not have heard before is “biomarker.” As researchers learn more about how cancer cells develop, grow, and spread, more attention is being paid to the role biomarkers play in these processes. For patients, undergoing biomarker testing helps their doctor/healthcare team determine whether or not...

Seizing upon a ‘Special Sauce’ of Drug Development to Fight Cancer in the Brain

In recent years, targeted therapies are among a revolution of new cancer treatments that have helped patients live longer than ever before. But with this success comes new challenges. Namely, many available cancer therapies can’t effectively treat cancer that has spread to the brain, as they have difficulty crossing over the blood-brain barrier— a tightly packed layer of cells that prevents toxins and other harmful substances from getting into the central nervous system, which includes the...