Melanoma symposium--in bullet points

I drove to the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center and back on Saturday (535 miles) to learn that:

• About half of the 60 or so people who attended the "Living with Melanoma" symposium were themselves either melanoma patients or survivors. I guess you could say I’m both.

• The coffee served in Seattle is always good, even when it comes out of a five-gallon urn.

• There are more tanning salons than Starbucks in many American cities.

• The World Health Organization has classified tanning beds as a carcinogen.

• Melanoma research is proportionately underfunded vis-a-vis other forms of cancer at the National Cancer Institute.

• Most melanoma patients receive results of their follow-up scans within a day. I’m lucky to get mine in three.

• Fewer melanoma centers are doing interleukin-2 therapy for advanced melanoma patients now that Yervoy has been approved.

• The melanoma program at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center has its own Facebook page. Why not every cancer center?

• Two of five plenary lectures at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) meeting next month are on new melanoma drugs.

• FDA approval for PLX4032 (vemurafenib) is expected by fall, which would make this targeted therapy the second drug approved for advanced melanoma this year.

• Prior to 2011, there hadn’t been a new FDA-approved drug for melanoma in 13 years.

• You’d be a fool to not seek care for advanced melanoma at a major cancer center with melanoma specialists. As one of the physician speakers said Saturday, “This cancer has humbled us all.”

• The Seattle Cancer Care Alliance takes patient care seriously. Both OHSU and Providence Cancer Center would do well to learn from it.

• Spontaneous regression is rare in melanoma, but much more common than in most other cancers.

• Complete responses to adoptive T cell therapy are rare, but can provide a cure.

• "Rare" is a word that melanoma specialists use a lot.

• Clinical investigators in melanoma really want you to sign up for clinical trials.

• If you don’t test positive for the BRAF mutation, taking PLX4032 can actually make your tumors grow faster.

• 80% of all benign moles carry a BRAF mutation. The single mutation by itself isn't enough to cause melanoma.

• About 50% of patients with metastatic disease confined to the skin (that includes me) respond to interleukin-2. If true, why hasn’t my oncologist told me this?

• Among all melanoma patients who receive IL-2, only 5% are full responders (cured). Until this spring, this drug was considered a first-line treatment—meaning there was nothing better.

• The lifetime risk of Caucasians being diagnosed with melanoma is 1 in 50. For those who are, the average life-years lost by early death are 18.6. Only testicular cancer has a worst record.

• Some people believe “we can see a time when melanoma will be treatable or curable.” I hope they’re right.