Current state of treatment for primary cutaneous melanoma

Abstract

The incidence of malignant melanoma has been rising steadily for the last 30 years. Through physician and patient education, surveillance of high-risk individuals, and biopsy of any suspicious lesions, more lesions are being diagnosed earlier, where there is a high cure rate. Unfortunately many patients will still present with thicker lesions or nodal involvement, which carries a significantly worse prognosis. Over the past decade, there have been several changes in the management of primary cutaneous melanoma. These have stemmed from novel surgical approaches, a new understanding of melanoma biology, and randomized clinical trials designed to improve outcome and decrease the morbidity of therapy. This article will review the clinical evidence behind the current treatment recommendations for primary cutaneous melanoma as well as some of the emerging data on innovative immunologic-approaches to melanoma treatment.

MDM2 SNP309 and p53 Arg72Pro in cutaneous melanoma: association between SNP309 GG genotype and tumor Breslow thickness

“…The primary tumor and any signs of progression were determinate according to recent classifications detected and confirmed by sonography, computed tomography or histopathology after surgical removal. 21 Given that people from Campania are exposed to the sun frequently, 40% of children have sunburns during holidays and 71.2% stay in the sun from 1100 to 1600 hours, 22 we included in this study only the cases who had more than three sunburns defined as episodes of intense erythema with or without blisters causing pain and discomfort for 42 days. 23 This explains the low-median age (37.0 years) of our patients.…”

A predicted functional single-nucleotide polymorphism of bone morphogenetic protein-4 gene affects mRNA expression and shows a significant association with cutaneous melanoma in Southern Italian population

“…Median and mean § SD of the Breslow thickness in our patients were 1 mm and 1.8 § 2.3 mm, respectively. The primary tumor and any signs of progression were determinate according to recent classiWcations detected and conWrmed by sonography, computed tomography or histopathology after surgical removal (Chung et al 2004). Given that people from Campania expose to the sun frequently, 40% of children have sunburns during holidays and 71.2% stay in the sun from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. (Balato et al 2007), we included in this study only the cases who had more than three sunburns deWned as episodes of intense erythema with or without blisters causing pain and discomfort for more than 2 days (Carli et al 2002).…”

“…Its incidence has been steadily increasing for the last 30 years (Chung et al 2004). CM is a paradigm of an aggressive, therapy-resistant malignant tumor (Balch et al 2001).…”

Combined Effect of Proteasome and Calpain Inhibition on Cisplatin-Resistant Human Melanoma Cells

“…Thus far, in metastatic melanoma, single-agent chemotherapy, including dacarbazine, nitrosoureas, Vinca alkaloids, cisplatin, paclitaxel, and bleomycin, have not been proven to be beneficial, with response rates well below 25% and no demonstration of prolonged survival (2). Cisplatin is frequently part of polychemotherapy regimens in melanoma treatment based on the feature that cells deficient in DNA repair are hypersensitive to cisplatin (3).…”