[Spooky23]

My wife had stage 4 melanoma. Prior to the newish immunotherapies about 5 years ago, it was a death sentence — 6-9 months life expectancy from diagnosis. Now, it’s 60-70% 5 year survival rate. Unfortunately my wife wasn’t one of them.

In general, these types of cancers spew mets and spread quickly. Many are resistant to chemo, go to the brain (chemo cannot help there) and only respond to high focused radiation like SRS or proton beam.

Immunotherapies essentially suppress checkpoints that cancer cells use to avoid immune response and/or cause your body to target specific checkpoints. I can’t read FT.com, but I believe it’s talking about a targeted therapy that allows your body to control the cancer.

There’s alot of research happening around things like immunotherapy combined with custom versions of Moderna and other vaccines that will significantly improve treatment and save people going through what my wife went through. It’s a good time.

[hereme888]

Sorry to hear about your wife. Yes, once those melanomas go deep enough in the skin, they spread everywhere like a plague.

I know there's even researchers creating AI-assisted treatment regimes that match specific mutations, other aspects of people's DNA, and all the immunotherapy drugs, in order to mix and match the best possible solution. Ongoing research and not yet widely available.

I look forward to learning more about the newer developments.