Latest news with #MelanomaInstitute
Daily Mail
14-06-2025
- Health
- Daily Mail
Renowned professor completes his 250th run months after being told he didn't have long to live
Terminal brain cancer sufferer Richard Scolyer has hit a fitness milestone that he feared he wouldn't live to acheive. Professor Scolyer, who co-directs the Melanoma Institute, was diagnosed with brain cancer in 2023 but experimental treatment initially kept the disease at bay. In March however, doctors told him an aggressive glioblastoma had returned meaning he had just months to live. Glioblastoma is one of the most aggressive types of brain cancer and causes fast-growing tumors to develop in the brain or spinal cord. After hearing the news, Professor Scolyer vowed to make the most of what little time he had left and pledged to complete 250 park runs. He was surrounded by friends and family when he crossed his latest finish line in Haberfield in Sydney on Saturday. Professor Scolyer donned a special t-shirt to commemorate the occasion and was met with three balloons spelling out '250' at the finish line. Despite the rain Professor Scolyer told those who were out waiting for him that he was glad to make the most of the time he had left. Professor Scolyer became emotional when he began thanking everyone for their support. 'My heart's touched … one of the challenges of having cancer is the worry for the future but there is more to life,' he said. 'We are all going to end up at some period where we're going to finish our lives, I want to make the most of my time.' The former Australian of the Year said 'it was a beautiful day' after finishing the park run alongside his wife Katie Nicoll. Professor Scolyer's daughter Emily, 21, son Matt, 19, older brother Mark and his partner Anna waited at the finish line with cupcakes to celebrate. Ms Nicoll only started joining her husband on runs after he became sick but managed to run her personal best time for his 250th park run. A park run is a 5km timed run, open to walkers, joggers, and runners of all ages and abilities which is often hosted by local communities on weekends. The run was Haberfield's biggest as 590 runners showed up to support Professor Scolyer. Emily said 'time is not promised' which made her father's goal so much more special. His family said they were prioritising spending whatever time remained since doctors told them it might only be a matter of months before he dies. In March, the family were able to organise a trip to Tasmania to celebrate Professor Scolyer's father's 90th birthday. Looking towards the future, Professor Scolyer said he had signed up for the City2Surf on August 10. The family are optimistic that he will be able to run the event and Ms Nicoll said she had seen her husband sneaking out for occasional run in preparation.
ABC News
12-06-2025
- Health
- ABC News
What to know about sunscreen, SPF and protecting yourself from the sun all year round
For many Australians, the first port of call for sun safety is sunscreen. However, a new Choice report found 16 from a sample of 20 widely available sunscreen products failed to meet the SPF level on their label. But experts say there's no need to panic. Here's everything they say you need to know — from how sunscreen is tested, what to look out for when shopping and what else you can do to protect yourself from the sun. SPF stands for Sun Protection Factor — how well something protects you against ultraviolet radiation (UV). The higher the number, the less UV passes through to your skin. SPF measures how much time it takes for an individual to burn while wearing a particular sunscreen. If someone normally burns after 10 minutes in the sun, an SPF of 10 should allow them to spend 100 minutes in the sun before burning, says Melanoma Institute dermatologist Dr Linda Martin. In percentages, that means the difference between an SPF50 and SPF30 might not be as much as you think. If applied correctly, an SPF50 lets through just 2 per cent of UV rays, whereas an SPF30 allows 3.3 per cent through, Dr Martin says. But Michelle Wong*, a cosmetic chemist and science communicator, says the gap in effectiveness grows, the less you apply. "So instead of just 2 per cent or 3.3 per cent of UV getting in, you will be getting either 4 per cent or 6.7 per cent," she said. Most of us only apply around a quarter of what is used in testing conditions, Dr Martin says. An SPF rating is calculated through testing on humans in an accredited laboratory. It can't be done in the sun because the conditions would be variable and dangerous. Instead, an instrument called a solar simulator that imitates sunlight is used. Researchers measure the time it takes for the skin to redden in an area where sunscreen has been applied, versus an area that has no sunscreen on it. Australia follows the international standard for sunscreen testing, which mandates testing on 10 volunteers. Many sunscreen brands sold in Australia test in labs overseas. In most cases, yes — sunscreens are very effective and the Choice results shouldn't make you lose faith, Dr Wong says. Australia has some of the strictest sunscreen regulations in the world and all are regulated by the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA). But the TGA says SPF results can vary between different laboratories because of the reliance on human testing. For example, Dr Wong says the redness of skin can be interpreted differently by testing staff, and results can differ depending on ethnicity and where testing is done. "Someone in Australia that's just come out of our summer is also going to have much more sun-tolerant skin than someone in, let's say, Europe," she says. Dr Wong said the best one is the one you will apply generously and regularly, and fits in with your budget. She says most of the time, an SPF30 is going to provide enough protection if you apply the right amount. The higher the SPF, the better — but remember if you only apply a quarter of the right amount of SPF50, you're essentially wearing an SPF 12.5, Dr Wong says. The TGA says SPFs in the range of 30 to 59 provide "high protection", while a SPF of 60 or higher provides "very high" protection. While SPF filters what's called UVB rays, you also need to protect from UVA radiation. UVB rays typically causes sunburn, while UVA penetrates deeper into the skin and can get through glass. So, make sure your sunscreen says something like 'UVB and UVA protection' or 'broad spectrum'. Also, if you're going to be spending a lot of time in the water (or just sweating heaps) then go for a water-resistant sunscreen. Dr Wong said there's a lot of debate about chemical versus mineral sunscreens, but at the end of the day they offer similar protection. You'll know you have a chemical sunscreen if the ingredients include things like octocrylene or aobenzone. You'll see zinc oxide or titanium oxide if it's a mineral sunscreen. She says in general, chemical sunscreens are lighter but have a higher chance of stinging your eyes, while mineral ones will have a more matte texture but may leave more white residue. Sunscreen can be applied underneath moisturisers and make-up, but Dr Wong says research shows they can be more effective when put over the top of skincare. The general recommendation is that when the UV index is forecast to reach 3 or above you should apply sunscreen as part of your daily routine. While UV radiation is generally higher in summer than winter, it's still there all year round. You might even need to wear sunscreen indoors, depending on your circumstances. For example, if you spend a lot of time driving, remember that untinted windows don't completely block UVA radiation. However, the latest advice, which you can read here and is backed by the Australasian College of Dermatologists, reflects the fact that people with darker skin tones need different sun safety advice. There's a lot we could cover here, but the most common mistakes are: You remember slip, slop, slap, right? Since that campaign was rolled out in 1981, two more have been added: seek shade and slide on sunglasses. In full, the Melanoma Institute's five rules for greater sun protection are: "Remember sunscreen is a filter. It's not a coat of armour and it's not the only step," Dr Martin says. "Skin cancer is the most common, the most expensive and the most preventable cancer in Australia." *Michelle Wong says in 2022 she did one-off sponsored posts with some of the brands tested by CHOICE.
News.com.au
20-05-2025
- Health
- News.com.au
‘Still keen to keep living': Eminent pathologist Professor Richard Scolyer reveals cancer has progressed
Acclaimed melanoma expert and former Australian of the Year Professor Richard Scolyer has shared a heartbreaking update on his battle with brain cancer – revealing the disease is advancing again. Professor Scolyer, 58, was diagnosed with the aggressive and incurable glioblastoma in 2023 and initially given just eight months to live. However, after undergoing experimental immunotherapy based on melanoma research, his cancer remained at bay for 18 months. In a social media post on Monday, Professor Scolyer confirmed a recent MRI scan had shown further progression of the tumour on the left side of his brain. 'While this may not be the best direction to be heading with my changes, amazingly (to me), I still seem keen to keep living, loving and having fun, whenever possible,' he wrote on social media. 'I feel like there are quite a few people on my team (including my family & friends) and they make me happy and proud.' The prominent cancer researcher, jointly named Australian of the Year in 2024 alongside fellow Melanoma Institute Australia co-director Professor Georgina Long, has remained remarkably candid and optimistic throughout his treatment journey. In February, Professor Scolyer announced the cancer had returned, prompting him to undergo surgery in March to remove as much of the tumour as possible. He later explained that while the procedure successfully removed a significant portion of the mass, 'little tentacles' remained and would require additional treatment to 'mop up' the remaining cancer cells. 'Depending on what the scan shows … that will help choose what are the next forms of therapy that I can have to see where we need to go from here,' he said at the time. He also acknowledged the emotional and physical toll of ongoing treatment, admitting he had been feeling 'a little up and down' due to side effects, though he continued to cherish time spent with his wife Katie and their children. 'Sometimes I'm happy to have fun, but some of the therapies have knocked me around a bit, so I can't do some of the things I love doing,' he said. 'I'm still having a fun time at home with my kids, they've been very kind, as well as my beautiful wife Katie has, who's been using her incredible intellect to help me speak to different doctors about various options that are available.' Professor Scolyer said he expects to undergo another operation and remains hopeful about future treatments. 'Fingers crossed this operation isn't so bad and we can move forward with the next form of therapy and hopefully push things along faster to try and get things open up for many, many patients who have got glioblastoma,' he said.
Medscape
14-05-2025
- Health
- Medscape
Calculator Aids With Assessing SNL Metastasis Risk in Melanoma
The Melanoma Institute of Australia (MIA) previously developed a risk calculator for sentinel lymph node (SLN) metastasis risk to help clinicians and patients with primary cutaneous melanoma decide whether to proceed with a SLN biopsy (SLNB). A new study published in JAMA Dermatology provides a validation update on the tool based on a larger and more geographically diverse study population. Not only were the results with a six-factor model using a larger population similar to those from the original dataset but also the calculator showed improved precision with narrowed 95% CIs. Both the original study and the larger validation analysis compared the accuracy of the calculator with the SLNB results that were available for each patient. The full calculator requires the input of age at diagnosis, Breslow tumor thickness (mm) and melanoma subtype (acral, superficial spreading, nodular, pure desmoplastic, or lentigo maligna melanoma). Clinicians can also include tumor mitotic rate (x/mm2 or mitosis present/absent), ulceration (present/absent) and lymphovascular invasion (present/absent) when this information is available. The new analysis included data from the National Danish Melanoma Database (N = 8533), three cancer centers in the United Kingdom (N = 2663), two in the United States (N = 1844), one in New Zealand (N = 449), one in Sweden (N = 1215), and one in Brazil (N = 1027). When pooled with the original cohort, 15,732 patients were included in the validation. What Did the New Study Find? A decision-curve analysis revealed the differences in clinical decision-making using the six-factor model or one using only Breslow thickness and ulceration. In this context, a given threshold probability reflects the minimum level of risk at which a clinician/patient would choose to proceed with an SLNB. Using all six MIA parameters and a threshold of 8% resulted in a favorable balance of minimizing unnecessary biopsies, while maintaining confidence in detecting metastasis. This lower-threshold approach is better suited to patients with a more conservative risk tolerance, who are willing to undergo biopsy when they have a lower risk for metastasis rather than miss one. In contrast, a simpler predictive model using only Breslow thickness and ulceration resulted in a higher net benefit at a 14% threshold for patients with higher risk tolerance. Net benefit refers to the reduced number of unnecessary biopsies (a positive) at the risk of missing some true cases of metastasis (a negative). This may be preferable for patients who want to limit biopsy to a high risk for metastasis. For these patients, avoiding biopsy is a greater concern than missing a true positive. This simpler approach may also be valuable in settings where more detailed information, such as subtype or mitotic rate, is unavailable. 'These findings reinforce the tool's reliability in predicting the risk a melanoma has spread to the lymph nodes in diverse patient groups, providing clinicians worldwide with greater confidence in its use for everyday practice,' primary investigator Alexander Varey, MD, PhD, said in a press statement. In addition, with the larger sample size the 95% CIs shrank with a mean reduction of more than 75%. Thresholds — the probability that reflects the minimum level of risk at which a clinician or patient would choose to proceed with an SLNB — of 5% and 10% are generally considered to be clinically relevant. At the 5% threshold, this increased precision shifted clinical interpretation in more than half of the patients (58%) — who previously had lower CI bounds below 5% — now had lower bounds greater than 5% with the inclusion of more data. In clinical terms, this means having greater confidence that a patient's true risk exceeds the 5% threshold (which reflects a patient's preference for a more conservative approach) improving the reliability of biopsy decisions in patients near that risk cutoff. Similarly, among patients whose upper 95% confidence bounds previously exceeded 10%, roughly a quarter (24%) now had upper bounds that fell below 10%, which increases the certainty that these patients are not at high risk. In clinical terms this supports safer biopsy avoidance in that group. What Makes the Tool Useful in Clinical Practice? 'This calculator is helpful because you can get all of this information just from the pathology report. You don't have to do another assay or spend thousands of dollars on genetic profiling,' said Mark Faries, MD, a surgical oncologist at Cedars‑Sinai and The Angeles Clinic and Research Institute, Los Angeles. He is also the co-director of the Cutaneous Oncology Program at the Cedars-Sinai and heads surgical oncology at The Angeles Clinic. The tool also adds easy-to-understand information for patients to improve the discussion of their care. 'If a patient comes in newly diagnosed with a melanoma, you would be able to put these parameters into the calculator, and it'll give you a number to suggest the risk that they have involvement of their lymph node', said Faries. 'Based on that information, you — together with the patient — can decide whether or not they can just have an excision of the skin site, or if they also need to have a sentinel lymph, node biopsy done.' He added, 'you can use [this calculator] for every patient. Just having that number helps patients understand what they're looking at. Many times, patients come in with a very pessimistic outlook, based on people's general feeling about melanoma. So even if they have a fairly substantial risk of having something in the node that justifies doing the node biopsy, you can reassure them that actually the most likely outcome is that everything's going to be okay. Even from that sort of peace of mind standpoint, it's useful for every patient.' What Does the New Study Add? In this study, 'they've collected a very large additional number of patients from other centers around the world and have further validated the results of the initial analysis…this new work makes the estimates more precise,' said Faries. With the earlier version of the calculator, 'there was a pretty wide range, where the probability might've reasonably fallen for a prediction. Now with these larger numbers [of patients] it's a much smaller range. So you have more confidence that the number you're getting is correct.,' he said. Are There Any Caveats or Room for Improvement? 'There still is some room for improvement at the lowest risk end of the scale,' Faries noted. 'The reason for that is that the calculator was developed based on patients who had a sentinel lymph node biopsy done. So they've already been selected to some extent. Relatively speaking, the number of patients they have at the very bottom end of the risk scale is not very large because those people don't get the lymph biopsy done. So I think when we have somebody who we generally wouldn't recommend doing a sentinel node biopsy for, the calculator is a little bit less definitive. I think there's more work that could be done to help at that very bottom end.' Varey reported receiving personal fees from Novartis AG and Merck & Co., Inc. (MSD).
ABC News
08-05-2025
- Health
- ABC News
'Could be months, could be less': Professor Richard Scolyer says he's not sure how long he has left to live
Richard Scolyer, the world-renowned pathologist and former Australian of the Year, says he may only have a few months to live after his brain cancer returned earlier this year. Professor Scolyer, 58, was first diagnosed with an aggressive glioblastoma in 2023 and was given just six to eight months. But his team's revolutionary and experimental immunotherapy treatment managed to keep the cancer at bay for almost two years with no recurrence. The treatment was based on his own research and then developed by Melanoma Institute co-director Georgina Long. It used the same immune therapies the pair had pioneered for melanoma and initially showed promising results. Richard Scolyer after a complex surgery in March 2025, which unfortunately showed his brain cancer had returned. ( Supplied: Instagram/@profrscolyer ) Professors Scolyer and Long were jointly named Australian of the Year in 2024 for their work. However, Professor Scolyer He told ABC News Breakfast on Thursday he's not sure how much time he has left. "I'm still here and still able to chat to you so I'm pretty pleased about that," he said. "Who knows how long I've got. Could be months, could be less." Professor Scolyer says he's focused on spending the time he has left doing the things he loves most. "I love my life. I love the interactions I have with so many people. "I guess in reality, I have focused down on the things that I like doing. Spending more time with my family is number one, but also contributing to society. It's something I've done for a long, long time. Richard Scolyer's treatment defied expectations by keeping his brain cancer at bay for 22 months. ( Twitter: @ProfRAScolyer ) "I've been a specialist for more than 25 years now. So a lot of things that I've done I don't want to give up just like that." His book, Brainstorm, won the Social Impact Book of the Year at the Australian Book Industry Awards in Melbourne on Wednesday night. Co-written with Garry Maddox, the book explores Professor Scolyer's extraordinary journey through brain cancer treatment. He told News Breakfast he was "delighted" to be recognised. "But ultimately, we're trying to make a difference for brain cancer patients. I hope that's where it ends up." Professor Scolyer says he had more fun than he'd expected writing the book, calling it a "great journey". Richard Scolyer at the Australian Book Industry Awards on Wednesday night. ( Supplied ) "I thought initially it might be just about the tough journey, but when I was approached about doing this, you get to talk about whole aspects of life and it's a lot of fun reminiscing on things, particularly when you're younger, the fun that you have." He says he hopes the book will help make a difference with discussions around brain cancer. "When you think about it, brain cancer treatment for the sort I've had, basically no-one is cured from it. And that doesn't sit with me right. "Melanoma, if it had spread around your body, what we call stage 4 melanoma, everyone died about 15 years ago. Now we're curing close to 60 per cent of such patients. "There are a lot of reasons why it's harder to treat brain cancer than melanoma, but to use some of the learnings that we've made at an earlier phase gives us a better chance." Now facing his own mortality, Professor Scolyer advice to people is to enjoy life as much as possible. " Be passionate about it, enjoy hanging out with the people that you love. Yeah, enjoy it. " Professor Scolyer's book, Brainstorm, was published in October 2024.
