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Exclusive: Cancer - A cure just got closer thanks to a tiny British company - and the result could change lives of millions That's the complete title. Here's the link.

Flynn Robinson passed away on Thursday at age 72 after a battle with cancer (multiple myeloma). Robinson was a 6-foot-1 guard who played just one, special season with the Lakers.

Scientists have discovered a chemical extract in green tea that can treat two types of skin cancer, without producing the harmful side effects associated with chemotherapy.While the epigallocatechin gallate (EGCg) compound is too weak to make an impact when consumed in tea, scientists were able to kill or shrink two-thirds of cancer cells within a month when they applied the extract to tumor cells in the lab. What's more, the chemical compound did not appear to affect any other healthy cells or tissues in the body.Researchers from the universities of Strathclyde and Glasgow believe that their study is the first...

A doctor in a white lab coat stands at the pearly gates. The voice of God booms, “And your good deeds?” The man responds, “Well, as a dermatologist, I’ve been warning people that sunlight will kill them and that it is as deadly as smoking.” His smug smile fades as God snaps, “You’re saying that sunlight, which I created to keep you alive, give you vitamin D and make you feel good, is deadly? And the millions of dollars you received from chemical sunscreen companies had nothing do with your blasphemy?” A bottle of SPF 1000 sunscreen materializes in the...

Scientists say taking food supplements containing vitamin A can make people less likely to develop melanoma, the deadliest form of the disease. A study found that retinol - a key component of Vitamin A - could protect against the illness. The strongest protective effects were found in women and in sun exposed sites, suggesting retinol actually combats skin cancer. However, there was no association between dietary intake of vitamin A, found in liver, eggs and milk, and a reduction in risk. Their findings, published in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology, found those who used retinol regularly were 60 per cent...

MONDAY, Jan. 16 (HealthDay News) — Recent declines in death rates due to the skin cancer melanoma among white Americans appear to be limited to those with higher levels of education, researchers have found. The findings reveal a widening education-related disparity in melanoma death rates and highlight the need for early-detection strategies to effectively target high-risk, low-educated whites, the American Cancer Society researchers said. The investigators noted that overall melanoma death rates among white men and women aged 25 to 64 in the United States have been declining since the early 1990s, but it hasn’t been known if death rates...

A newly developed pair of drugs has been shown to be successful in the treatment of the deadly skin cancer melanoma. Designed by Bristol-Myers and Roche, to work in different ways, the drugs vemurafenib and Yervoy have successfully treated late-stage patients who, according to WebMD had precious few options in the past. Dr. James Larkin worked on the trials of both drugs and said this is the first advancement in melanoma treatment since the 1970s. This makes these the first drugs to prolong survival from a type of cancer that claims the lives of more than one in 10 of...

While incidents of melanoma continue to increase despite the use of sunscreen and skin screenings, a topical compound called ISC-4 may prevent melanoma lesion formation, according to Penn State College of Medicine researchers. "The steady increase in melanoma incidence suggests that additional preventive approaches are needed to complement these existing strategies," said Gavin Robertson, Ph.D., professor of pharmacology, pathology, dermatology and surgery, and director of Penn State Hershey Melanoma Center. Researchers targeted the protein Akt3, which plays a central role in 70 percent of melanoma by preventing cell death and has the potential to prevent early stages of melanoma. "The...

A widely hailed new drug for melanoma, which was tested in combination with another drug to boost its tumor-fighting power, has done well in a key safety trial. According to a press briefing today at the American Society for Clinical Oncology's (ASCO's) annual meeting in Chicago, Illinois, the new study is an important test case of a hot area in cancer research—combining molecularly targeted drugs. Targeted cancer therapies have strengths and weaknesses. They home in on a tumor's weak spot, often a faulty protein that signals a cell's nucleus to divide. The most famous such drug, Gleevec, has saved the...

Rush University Medical Center leads nationwide study CHICAGO – Rush University Medical Center is leading a nationwide Phase III clinical trial to determine whether a promising vaccine for advanced melanoma can effectively treat the deadly skin cancer. An earlier Phase II trial of the experimental drug involving 50 patients with metastatic melanoma had stunning results. Eight patients recovered completely and four partially responded to the vaccine. "Very few treatment options exist for patients with advanced melanoma, none of them satisfactory, which is why oncologists are so excited about the results we found in our Phase II study," said Dr. Howard...

PHILADELPHIA — His patient, a spunky Italian-American woman in her 60s, was waiting in an exam room down the hall for the answer: Was the experimental drug stopping her deadly skin cancer? But as Dr. Keith Flaherty read out the measurements of her tumors from the latest CT scan, he could not keep the distress from his voice. “She’s worse,” he said to the clinical trial nurse at the University of Pennsylvania’s melanoma clinic. Like the 17 other patients on the drug trial — the corporate lawyer, the receptionist with young children, the Philadelphia philanthropist — the woman known in...

ORLANDO, Fla. — On a sunny afternoon last June, Dr. Keith Flaherty stood before a large room packed with oncologists from around the world and described the extraordinary recovery of the melanoma patients in the experimental drug trial he was leading. It was a moment he had looked forward to for months. Beyond a breakthrough for melanoma, the results were a promising sign for an approach to treatment for all forms of cancer that he and others had championed as more effective and less toxic than standard chemotherapy. But even as he flashed the slide of his favorite graph, showing...

PARIS (AFP) – Bone-bending rickets can now be added to the list of ills linked to children spending uncounted hours before a computer screen, British researchers said Friday. Youngsters with rickets, caused primarily by a chronic lack of vitamin D, develop painful and deformed bow-legs that do not grow properly. > Half of all adults in Britain -- especially in the north -- have Vitamin D deficiency in winter and spring, with one-in-six having severe deficiency. The condition has been linked to cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, several kinds of cancer and a soft-bone condition in adults called osteomalacia. While...

Some 65 years ago, as World War II raged in Europe and the Pacific, the American people faced an unprecedented constitutional crisis of which they were completely unaware — and which has remained a secret ever since. It has long been known that President Franklin D. Roosevelt, during the last year of his life, was gravely ill with serious cardiac problems: He'd been diagnosed with acute heart failure in March 1944 and suffered from astronomically high blood pressure and arteriosclerosis. But what the public did not know was that four years earlier, while still in the second of his four...

RIVER EDGE — A borough resident is on a mission to get saint status for a beloved Detroit priest, who he believes answered prayers to heal his son's cancer.           Ryan Blute holding photo of the Rev. Solanus Casey, whom he prayed to for a cancer cure. Kevin Blute hopes the Vatican will make the Rev. Solanus Casey the first male saint born in the U.S., and     suggested a friend's prayer group name itself after the friar. Blute's teenage son, Ryan, was diagnosed with melanoma in 2007 and has since recovered.  "I feel like I'm in gratitude to him big...

I JUST CAME ACROSS THIS PATHETIC AND UNPLEASANT AD ON YOUTUBE. LOOK: Urge PBS' Jim Lehrer to ask McCain about his health records during Friday's debate: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/letters.html This debate will deal with foreign policy, and McCain's health issues constitute a national security issue, especially when you consider how his secrecy about medical records echoes the Bush administration's legacy of lies. Will McCain's health limit his capacity to make tough decisions regarding diplomacy and military action? We don't know, because McCain is keeping his medical records a tightly held secret, made available to just a handful of journalists for three hours...

The June 19, 2008 headline reads “US doctors kill skin cancer with cloned T-cells.” Does this suggest that human cloning of embryonic stem cells has been successful in treating skin cancer? Absolutely not! The details of the New England Journal of Medicine report that generated this news coverage reveal that adult stem cells obtained from the patient were used. As reported in ScienceDaily, researchers “removed CD4+ T cells, a type of white blood cell, from a 52-year-old man whose Stage 4 melanoma had spread to a groin lymph node and to a lung. T cells specific to targeting the melanoma...

A cancer patient has made a full recovery after being injected with billions of his own immune cells in the first case of its kind, doctors have disclosed. The 52-year-old, who was suffering from advanced skin cancer, was free from tumours within eight weeks of undergoing the procedure. After two years he is still free from the disease which had spread to his lymph nodes and one of his lungs. Doctors took cells from the man's own defence system that were found to attack the cancer cells best, cloned them and injected back into his body, in a process known...

The New York Times' campaign against Republican nominee John McCain is getting into full swing, but it has a certain wistful quality. Like this headline: "On the Campaign Trail, Few Mentions of McCain’s Bout With Melanoma." If only the voters cared more about melanoma! Of course, it's hard for even the New York Times to produce a long article without mentioning some facts. So the paper has to admit: The final pathology analysis showed no evidence of spread of the melanoma. *** Mr. McCain’s prognosis for the recurrence of melanoma can be gauged only by talking to experts not connected...

Along with his signature bright white hair, the most striking aspects of Senator John McCain’s physical appearance are his puffy left cheek and the scar that runs down the back of his neck.