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Melanoma of the foot

Discussion in 'General Issues and Discussion Forum' started by NewsBot, Oct 30, 2009.

  1. NewsBot

    NewsBot The Admin that posts the news.

    Articles:
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    Surgical excision margin for primary acral melanoma.
    Lee KT et al
    J Surg Oncol. 2016 Dec;114(8):933-939. doi: 10.1002/jso.24442
     
  2. NewsBot

    NewsBot The Admin that posts the news.

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    Press Release:
    UI researchers document how melanoma tumors form
    Team identifies drugs that halt skin cancer metastasis in lab tests
    Melanoma cells move quickly, extending cables to reel in other cells and form tumors

     
  3. NewsBot

    NewsBot The Admin that posts the news.

    Articles:
    1
    Clinical factors associated with subclinical spread of in situ melanoma.
    Shin TM et al
    J Am Acad Dermatol. 2017 Apr;76(4):707-713. doi: 10.1016/j.jaad.2016.10.049
     
  4. NewsBot

    NewsBot The Admin that posts the news.

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    Acral Melanoma and Mechanical Stress on the Plantar Surface of the Foot
    N Engl J Med 2017; 377:395-396July 27, 2017DOI: 10.1056/NEJMc1706162
    full text letter
     
  5. NewsBot

    NewsBot The Admin that posts the news.

    Articles:
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    Interdigital Melanoma of the Foot Affecting Two Neighbouring Interdigital Spaces - Second Case Report.
    Wollina U et al
    Open Access Maced J Med Sci. 2017 Jul 19;5(4):448-450
     
  6. NewsBot

    NewsBot The Admin that posts the news.

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  7. NewsBot

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    Acral melanoma foot lesions. Part 1: epidemiology, aetiology, and molecular pathology.
    Desai A et al
    Clin Exp Dermatol. 2017 Sep 22. doi: 10.1111/ced.13243.
     
  8. NewsBot

    NewsBot The Admin that posts the news.

    Articles:
    1
    Delay in diagnosis of acral melanoma.
    Rheingantz da Cunha Filho R, Matte L, Hohmann Camina R.
    Dermatol Online J. 2016 Oct 15;22(10). pii: 13030/qt0gr3p9xk.
     
  9. NewsBot

    NewsBot The Admin that posts the news.

    Articles:
    1
    Melanoma of the Foot Is Associated With Advanced Disease and Poorer Survival
    Barbara E. Adams et al
    JFAS; Article in Press
     
  10. NewsBot

    NewsBot The Admin that posts the news.

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    PUBLIC RELEASE: 28-NOV-2017
    This 'sweet spot' could improve Melanoma diagnosis

    Too much, too little, just right. It might seem like a line from "Goldilocks and the Three Bears," but actually describes an important finding from researchers in Florida Atlantic University's College of Engineering and Computer Science. They have developed a technique using machine learning - a sub-field of artificial intelligence (AI) - that will enhance computer-aided diagnosis (CADx) of melanoma. Thanks to the algorithm they created - which can be used in mobile apps that are being developed to diagnose suspicious moles - they were able to determine the "sweet spot" in classifying images of skin lesions.

    This new finding, published in the Journal of Digital Imaging, will ultimately help clinicians more reliably identify and diagnose melanoma skin lesions, distinguishing them from other types of skin lesions. The research was conducted in the NSF Industry/University Cooperative Research Center for Advanced Knowledge Enablement (CAKE) at FAU and was funded by the Center's industry members.

    Melanoma is a particularly deadly form of skin cancer when left undiagnosed. In the United States alone, there were an estimated 76,380 new cases of melanoma and an estimated 6,750 deaths due to melanoma in 2016. Malignant melanoma and benign skin lesions often appear very similar to the untrained eye. Over the years, dermatologists have developed different heuristic classification methods to diagnose melanoma, but to limited success (65 to 80 percent accuracy). As a result, computer scientists and doctors have teamed up to develop CADx tools capable of aiding physicians to classify skin lesions, which could potentially save numerous lives each year.

    "Contemporary CADx systems are powered by deep learning architectures, which basically consist of a method used to train computers to perform an intelligent task. We feed them massive amounts of data so that they can learn to extract meaning from the data and, eventually, demonstrate performance comparable to human experts - dermatologists in this case," said Oge Marques, Ph.D., lead author of the study and a professor in FAU's Department of Computer and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science who specializes in machine cognition, medical imaging and health care technologies. "We are not trying to replace physicians or other medical professionals with artificial intelligence. We are trying to help them solve a problem faster and with greater accuracy, in other words enabling augmented intelligence."

    Images of skin lesions often contain more than just skin lesions - background noise, hair, scars, and other artifacts in the image can potentially confuse the CADx system. To prevent the classifier from incorrectly associating these irrelevant artifacts with melanoma, the images are segmented into two parts, separating the lesion from the surrounding skin, hoping that the segmented lesion can be more easily analyzed and classified.

    "Previous studies have produced conflicting results: some research suggests that segmentation improves classification while other research suggests that segmentation is detrimental, due to a loss of contextual information around the lesion area," said Marques. "How much we segment an image can either help or impede skin lesion classification."

    With that in mind, Marques and his collaborators Borko Furht, Ph.D., a professor in FAU's Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Computer Science and director of the NSF-sponsored CAKE at FAU; Jack Burdick, a second-year master's student at FAU; and Janet Weinthal, an undergraduate student at FAU, tested their hypothesis: "How much segmentation is too much?"

    To test their hypothesis, the researchers first compared the effects of no segmentation, full segmentation, and partial segmentation on classification and demonstrated that partial segmentation led to the best results. They then proceeded to determine how much segmentation would be "just right." To do that, they used three degrees of partial segmentation, investigating how a variable-sized non-lesion border around the segmented skin lesion affects classification results. They performed comparisons in a systematic and reproducible manner to demonstrate empirically that a certain amount of segmentation border around the lesion could improve classification performance.

    Their findings suggest that extending the border beyond the lesion to include a limited amount of background pixels improves their classifier's ability to distinguish melanoma from a benign skin lesion.

    "Our experimental results suggest that there appears to be a 'sweet spot' in the degree to which the surrounding skin included is neither too great nor too small and provides a 'just right' amount of context," said Marques.

    Their method showed an improvement across all relevant measures of performance for a skin lesion classifier.
     
  11. NewsBot

    NewsBot The Admin that posts the news.

    Articles:
    1
    Acral melanoma foot lesions. Part 2: clinical presentation, diagnosis, and management.
    Desai A et al
    Clin Exp Dermatol. 2017 Dec 13. doi: 10.1111/ced.13323.
     
  12. NewsBot

    NewsBot The Admin that posts the news.

    Articles:
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    Immediate Reconstruction for Plantar Melanoma: A Paradigm Shift.
    Oliver-Allen H, Piper M, Vaughn C, Sbitany H.
    Ann Plast Surg. 2017 May;78(5 Suppl 4):S194-S198. doi: 10.1097/SAP.0000000000001115.
     
  13. NewsBot

    NewsBot The Admin that posts the news.

    Articles:
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    Surgical Management of Plantar Melanoma: A Retrospective Study in One Center
    Min Wang et al
    JFAS: April 06, 2018
     
  14. NewsBot

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    Articles:
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    PUBLIC RELEASE: 25-APR-2018
    Targeting telomerase as therapeutic strategy for melanoma
    Combination therapy co-targeting the mitochondria enhances the antitumor effect of telomerase inhibition in NRAS-mutant melanoma


    PHILADELPHIA -- (April 25, 2018) -- Targeting telomerase was effective at killing NRAS-mutant melanoma cells, and the impact was further enhanced when the strategy was paired with an inhibitor of mitochondrial function, according to study results by The Wistar Institute published in Oncogene.

    "Many melanoma patients do not benefit from new treatment options or experience disease progression because of resistance. Our research advances the search for novel therapeutic strategies to treat NRAS-mutant melanoma, which is highly resistant to most therapies and associated with poor prognosis," said lead researcher Jessie Villanueva, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Molecular & Cellular Oncogenesis Program at Wistar.

    Targeting NRAS as well as the other oncogenes of the Ras family has proven extremely challenging, according to Villanueva, and researchers have resorted to searching for vulnerabilities in NRAS-mutant cancer cells that can provide alternative therapeutic targets.

    Mutations in the regulatory element of the TERT gene, which encodes the catalytic subunit of telomerase, are found in more than 70 percent of melanomas. Telomerase is an enzyme that protects the integrity of chromosome ends during replication and represents a promising target for cancer therapy because it is absent in most normal adult cells while its reactivation in malignant cells allows continuous cell divisions.

    "We linked the presence of mutant NRAS to TERT expression and showed that NRAS mutant melanoma cells are highly dependent on telomerase," said Villanueva. "We also demonstrated the therapeutic value of exploiting this dependency by inducing telomere dysfunction, which caused cell death selectively in NRAS mutant cells and not in normal cells that do not express telomerase."

    Villanueva and colleagues studied the consequence of NRAS depletion on gene expression in NRAS-mutant melanoma cells, focusing on genes that regulate proliferation. They observed a strong decrease in expression of TERT. They then inhibited telomerase activity via TERT gene silencing or induced telomere dysfunction through a telomerase substrate, called 6-thio-dG; both interventions led to extensive cell death and DNA damage. They also observed an increase in expression of several enzymes involved in the function of mitochondria, the organelles designated to energy production, suggesting that following telomere dysfunction cells put in place an adaptive metabolic response that helps them cope with the damage.

    "We asked whether inhibition of mitochondrial function could synergize with the anti-melanoma effects of telomere dysfunction," said Patricia Reyes-Uribe, a research assistant in the Villanueva Lab and the first author of the study. "We found that the mitochondrial inhibitor gamitrinib enhances the cytotoxic effects of TERT depletion or 6-thio-dG selectively in NRAS mutant tumor cells."

    These observations were reproduced in vivo in a mouse model of NRAS-mutant melanoma by showing that the combination of gamitrinib and 6-thio-dG reduced tumor size and substantially prolonged survival.

    "Our work provides proof-of-principle that we can successfully address drug resistance by developing combination therapies that simultaneously impair telomerase and block adaptive resistance mechanisms," added Villanueva.
     
  15. NewsBot

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    Articles:
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    Acral Lentiginous Melanoma Is Associated with Certain Poor Prognostic Histopathological Factors but May Not be Correlated with Nodal Involvement, Recurrence, and a Worse Survival.
    Tas F, Erturk K.
    Pathobiology. 2018 Jun 1:1-5.
     
  16. NewsBot

    NewsBot The Admin that posts the news.

    Articles:
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    Plantar melanoma is associated with certain poor prognostic histopathological factors, but not correlated with nodal involvement, recurrence, and worse survival.
    Tas F, Erturk K
    Clin Transl Oncol. 2018 May;20(5):607-612.
     
  17. NewsBot

    NewsBot The Admin that posts the news.

    Articles:
    1
    Malignant Melanomas of the Skin Arising on the Feet.
    Vladimír B, Milada K.
    Klin Onkol. 2018 Summer;31(4):289-292
     
  18. NewsBot

    NewsBot The Admin that posts the news.

    Articles:
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    A pink enlarging plaque on the plantar foot: amelanotic acral lentiginous melanoma.
    Okhovat JP, Tahan SR, Kim CC
    Dermatol Online J. 2019 Jan 15;25(1). pii: 13030/qt3p91j5db.
     
  19. NewsBot

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    Articles:
    1
    The incidence of melanoma in South Africa: An exploratory analysis of National Cancer Registry data from 2005 to 2013 with a specific focus on melanoma in black Africans.
    Tod BM, Kellett PE, Singh E, Visser WI, Lombard CJ, Wright CY.
    S Afr Med J. 2019 Mar 29;109(4):246-253
     
  20. NewsBot

    NewsBot The Admin that posts the news.

    Articles:
    1
    The Role of Mechanical Stress in the Formation of Plantar Melanoma: A Retrospective Analysis of 72 Chinese Patients with Plantar Melanomas and a meta-analysis.
    Gong HZ et al
    J Eur Acad Dermatol Venereol. 2019 Sep 7
     
  21. NewsBot

    NewsBot The Admin that posts the news.

    Articles:
    1
    Acquired agminated melanocytic nevus in the acral area is a potential mimicker of acral lentiginous melanoma: A three-case series report and published work review.
    Ogawa K et al
    J Dermatol. 2020 May 4
     
  22. NewsBot

    NewsBot The Admin that posts the news.

    Articles:
    1
    Primary acral amelanotic melanoma: A rare case report
    Jiaojiao Zhang et al
    Mol Clin Oncol. 2020 Nov;13(5):59
     
  23. NewsBot

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    Articles:
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    NEWS RELEASE 16-OCT-2020
    A promising new tool in the fight against melanoma
    An Edith Cowan University (ECU) study has revealed that a key blood marker of cancer could be used to select the most effective treatment for melanoma


    An Edith Cowan University (ECU) study has revealed that a key blood marker of cancer could be used to select the most effective treatment for melanoma.

    The discovery, which has the potential to improve melanoma survival rates, was published today in Clinical Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.

    The research found that patients with high levels of circulating tumour DNA (ctDNA) - an important indicator of cancer in the blood - could potentially benefit from receiving a more aggressive treatment as a first line of defence against melanoma.

    The study's lead researcher Associate Professor Elin Gray said the finding could help clinicians home in on effective melanoma treatments.

    "Selecting the right course of drugs and therapies to treat melanoma is extremely complex and relies on a number of factors, including the characteristics of the tumour and how it has spread throughout the body," Associate Professor Gray said.

    "This biomarker could help clinicians to better determine which patients would have better outcomes if we hit the cancer with an aggressive combination immunotherapy first."

    Taking aim

    Associate Professor Gray said while the research findings require validation in future studies, they highlight the need to carefully consider how biomarkers are used in melanoma treatment decisions.

    "It's important to know when we should be targeting the cancer with certain types of drugs and which patients would benefit the most as aggressive treatments often result in more serious side effects," she said.

    "This research will help clinicians to deliver personalised therapy regimens based on specific disease characteristics and the patient."

    More clues

    The study, part of the thesis of ECU PhD student Gabriela Marsavela, examined levels of the ctDNA biomarker in the blood of 125 metastatic melanoma patients recruited at Fiona Stanley Hospital and Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital in Perth, Western Australia, prior to undergoing immunotherapy. Results were validated in 128 patients recruited in collaboration with the Melanoma Institute Australia and Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre.

    The research also found that the ctDNA biomarker cannot predict patient outcome in melanoma patients who received immunotherapy as a second line of treatment. Previous studies have shown that the marker is useful in predicting patient survival before the first line of treatment.

    Associate Professor Gray said this finding is significant.

    "While ctDNA can be used to indicate patient response to targeted first-round melanoma therapies, we now know that this biomarker cannot predict survival after second line treatment," she said.

    "This means clinicians should use other ways of determining if a treatment will be successful or not."

    Future of medicine

    The new findings build on the ECU Melanoma Research Group's growing body of research investigating markers of cancer in the blood, also referred to as liquid biopsy. Study of these blood biomarkers is important in understanding how cancer spreads throughout the body.

    According to Associate Professor Gray, further analysis of key biomarkers could hold the clues to unlocking future treatments.

    "We have been battling to find new drugs and therapies to treat melanoma, but if we can find evidence that a particular drug can work for a tumour with particular characteristics, this could allow us to use existing drugs in a more targeted and precise way," she said.

    Associate Professor Gray's team is now delving deeper into the characteristics of melanoma tumours that become resistant to therapy and why second-line treatments fail.

    "This study really opened up a lot of questions and we now want to know what makes these tumours different, more aggressive and resistant to therapies," said Professor Gray.
     
  24. NewsBot

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    Articles:
    1
    Inguinal Lymph Node Dissection for Advanced Stages of Plantar Melanoma in a Low-Income Country
    Ollo Roland Somé et al
    Source
     
  25. NewsBot

    NewsBot The Admin that posts the news.

    Articles:
    1
    Limb melanomas: acral melanomas have worse survival
    Faruk Tas , Kayhan Erturk
    J Dermatolog Treat. 2021 Jan 20;1-22
     
  26. NewsBot

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    Articles:
    1
  27. NewsBot

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    Amelanotic acral melanoma originating from the foot: a clinical case
    Luisa Piccin
    Recenti Prog Med. 2021 Apr;112(4):44e-48e
     
  28. NewsBot

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    Articles:
    1
    Acral Lentiginous Melanoma - Population, Treatment and Survival using the NCDB from 2004-2015
    Shelly Bian et al
    Pigment Cell Melanoma Res. 2021 Jul 17
     
  29. NewsBot

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    NEWS RELEASE 22-JUL-2021
    Antibiotics may help to treat melanoma
    Some antibiotics appear to be effective against a form of skin cancer known as melanoma. Researchers at KU Leuven, Belgium, examined the effect of these antibiotics on patient-derived tumours in mice. Their findings were published in the Journal of Experimental Medicine.

    Researchers from KU Leuven may have found a new weapon in the fight against melanoma: antibiotics that target the 'power plants' of cancer cells. These antibiotics exploit a vulnerability that arises in tumour cells when they try to survive cancer therapy.

    "As the cancer evolves, some melanoma cells may escape the treatment and stop proliferating to 'hide' from the immune system. These are the cells that have the potential to form a new tumour mass at a later stage" explains cancer researcher and RNA biologist Eleonora Leucci (KU Leuven). "In order to survive the cancer treatment however, those inactive cells need to keep their 'power plants' - the mitochondria - switched on at all times". As mitochondria derive from bacteria that, over time, started living inside cells, they are very vulnerable to a specific class of antibiotics. This is what gave us the idea to use these antibiotics as anti-melanoma agents."

    The researchers implanted patient-derived tumours into mice, which were then treated with antibiotics - either as the only treatment or in combination with existing anti-melanoma therapies. Leucci: "The antibiotics quickly killed many cancer cells and could thus be used to buy the precious time needed for immunotherapy to kick in. In tumours that were no longer responding to targeted therapies, the antibiotics extended the lifespan of - and in some cases even cured - the mice."

    The researchers worked with antibiotics that are now, because of rising antibiotic resistance, only rarely used in bacterial infection. However, this resistance has no effect on the efficacy of the treatment in this study, explains Leucci. "The cancer cells show high sensitivity to these antibiotics, so we can now look to repurpose them to treat cancer instead of bacterial infections."

    However, patients with melanoma shouldn't start experimenting, warns Leucci. "Our findings are based on research in mice, so we don't know how effective this treatment is in human beings. Our study mentions only one human case where a melanoma patient received antibiotics to treat a bacterial infection, and this re-sensitised a resistant melanoma lesion to standard therapy. This result is cause for optimism, but we need more research and clinical studies to examine the use of antibiotics to treat cancer patients. Together with oncologist Oliver Bechter (KU Leuven/UZ Leuven), who is a co-author of this study, we are currently exploring our options."
     
  30. NewsBot

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    1
    Digit melanomas are associated with poor prognostic factors and unfavorable survivals
    Faruk Tas, Kayhan Erturk
    J Cosmet Dermatol. 2021 Aug 1
     
  31. NewsBot

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    1
    Clinical characteristics and differences among 802 acral tumors by anatomical sites
    H K Park, Y D Choi, S J Yun
    Clin Exp Dermatol. 2021 Aug 13
     
  32. NewsBot

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    Plantar Melanoma: An Investigation of Its Incidence
    Michael An et al
    Clin Podiatr Med Surg. 2021 Oct;38(4):595-599
     
  33. NewsBot

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    Differences by Anatomical Site of Non-Acral Lentiginous Melanomas of the Lower Limb
    Alicia Gavillero et al
    Dermatology. 2022 Mar 29;1-9
     
  34. NewsBot

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    Articles:
    1
    Characteristics and surgical treatment of recurrence melanoma of the foot: a case report and brief literature review
    X-L Liu 1, H Li, G-Z Wu
    Eur Rev Med Pharmacol Sci. 2022 Apr;26(8):2918-2925
     
  35. NewsBot

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    Unmasking Acral Lentiginous Melanoma
    Alysia Gregg B.S., Lauryn Orsillo B.S., Hanna Shulte B.S.
    Extremitus
     
  36. NewsBot

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    Metastatic malignant melanoma: A case of metastasis from foot to mandibular anterior region
    Anita D Munde et al
    J Cancer Res Ther. 2022 Apr-Jun;18(3):849-852
     
  37. NewsBot

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    Melanoma predilection for the lower limbs of women compared with men
    M Shakeel et al
    Arch Dermatol Res. 2022 Sep 14
     
  38. NewsBot

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    1
    Amelanotic melanomas are often diagnosed at an advanced stage
    Freja Lund Nielsen, Mitra Sepehri
    Ugeskr Laeger. 2023 Apr 24;185(17):V10220605
     
  39. NewsBot

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    Foot melanoma localized to subungual toe location portends poorer prognosis
    Mitzi L Williams, DPM et al
    May 09, 2023
     
  40. NewsBot

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    1
    A Rare Case of Acral Lentiginous Melanoma
    Soham Meghe et al
    Cureus. 2023 May 12;15(5):e38926
     
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