Hope over tumor-killing skin cancer drug

Doctors emphasize and agree that melanoma tumors were different from, and deadlier than, other cancers. Nearly half of all skin cancer patients that have tumors 4 millimeters thick will die while 95 percent breast cancer patients with tumors the same size will survive. This explains why the study has been focused mainly on skin cancer because melanoma tumors are particularly deadly.

In Barcelona, Spain, doctors have found a new drug to treat skin cancer by causing tumor cells to self-destruct by overloading them with oxygen. Unlike normal cells that can control their oxygen levels relatively easily, cancer cells have trouble balancing the levels. This weak spot of cancer cells is proving very useful in cancer research. The new drug, called STA-4783 has no effect on normal cells, and so it does not come with many side effects. Experiments with the new drug have shown that the treated patients have survived an average of one year after being diagnosed while those getting the regular standard treatment have survived only an average of 7.8 months.

This amazing innovation can expand the research and treatment of cancer dramatically. It is still being heavily studied because not everything about the new drug is entirely known but there is a bright future because although the study showed patients living longer with the cancer, there is some hope that the drug can be used as an actual cure for cancer since it causes the tumor cells to die off.

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