melanoma

Let's face it: How much sun is too much sun is, for most of us, one giant guessing game. We can use all the sunscreen we want and watch the clock like hawks, but the surest signs that we've had too much -- the pink burn, the blisters, the vomiting -- come well after the damage has been done.

Chemistry professors at the University of Strathclyde in Sweden hope to remove some of the guesswork with their UV-detecting wristband, which they plan to bring to market in 2013.

The device, which uses what is called UV dosimeter technology, relies on concepts that have been used in clinical research for years. An acid-release agent decomposes in sunlight, while a dye responds to pH levels, so that as sun exposure increases the color of the band gradually shifts from yellow to pink.… Read more

Got a new mole? A bad sunburn? A family member with a skin cancer diagnosis?

UMSkinCheck, a free new app for iPhone and iPad developed at the University of Michigan, includes a risk calculator that will help you determine your individual risk. If you have any concern at all, it guides you through taking a series of 23 photos that cover your entire body to develop a baseline for future photo comparisons.

"Whole body photography is a well-established resource for following patients at risk for melanoma," Michael Sabel, lead physician in app development and associate professor of surgery … Read more

Sometimes we need to see to believe. I remember understanding on an intellectual level, from a young age, that smoking was bad, but I didn't really get it on a visceral level until I saw a smoker's blackened lungs. The effect was so profound that, to this day, I go so far as to hold my breath when walking past people smoking.

Unfortunately, it's not easy to peer inside our own bodies and check out the health of our lungs. It's also difficult to see the effects sun exposure is having on our skin, especially when … Read more

You may not have thought of using your iPhone to catalog your moles and freckles, but Health Discovery Corporation has. The company is the developer behind MelApp, a $1.99 iOS app that gives you a risk assessment for melanoma on your skin.

According to the American Melanoma Foundation, one American dies of melanoma every hour. It's worthwhile to dedicate a little time to watching your moles.

Here's the process. Take a picture of a suspicious mole with your camera. Label it, mark the diameter, and indicate how fast the mole's evolution has been. Click on the "Check Risk" button.

The image is uploaded to a server and run through an image analysis risk assessment process. According to the app's developer, MelApp has been validated using an image database licensed from John Hopkins University Medical Center.

MelApp comes back with a high- or low-risk diagnosis based on five parameters ranging from mole asymmetry to rate of evolution. A self-assessment feature can help verify the app's findings.… Read more

Five melanoma patients at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York are about to become subjects in the first human clinical trial approved by the Food and Drug Administration that uses inorganic material in the same way as a drug.

Dubbed Cornell dots (or "C dots" for short), the brightly glowing nanoparticles are silica spheres less than 8 nanometers (one-billionth of a meter) in diameter that hold dye molecules. Those spheres are basically glass, chemically inert and small enough to pass through the body and out in a urine stream, and for clinical use are coated with polyethylene glycol … Read more