Latest news with #MelanomaInstitute
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.
