In Austria approx. 1,280 people are diagnosed with malignant melanoma per year and around 280 die of it.
Worldwide approximately 160,000 people are diagnosed with malignant melanoma per year and around 40,000 die of it.
Malignant melanoma, also known as black skin cancer, is a highly malignant tumour of the pigment cells. It tends to spread metastases early via the lymph and blood streams and is the most frequent fatal skin disease with a fast rising number of new diagnoses throughout the world. (Source Wikipedia)
In Austria around 10-15 new melanoma diagnoses per 100,000 of the population are made each year, whereby incidence has strongly risen over recent decades. In countries with stronger sunlight such as Australia incidence of skin melanoma is considerably more frequent than in Austria (up to 40 new diagnoses per year per 100,000 of the population).
The best opportunity for therapy is still early recognition and surgical removal of the tumour. However, when metastasis has already occurred all forms of chemotherapy are helpless, which was also confirmed with disappointment at the 6th World Congress on Melanoma in Vancouver in September 2005.
In 1983, based on his experience with NSC 631570 in the treatment of patients with metastasising melanoma, Prof. Dr. Peter Wodniansky, a renowned melanoma specialist in Austria, observed that this medicament can save patients' lives. It was therefore no wonder that he felt obliged to inform the Ministry of Health. (Link) He reported his good results and requested that the potential of NSC 631570 should be investigated in a clinical study. Unfortunately this has not happened until now even though the Pharmaceutical Committee of the Ministry of Health approved a clinical study with melanoma patients.
Many melanoma patients who already had metastases were aware that they could not benefit from conventional chemotherapy. Those patients, some of whom were already regarded as hopeless cases on account of multiple metastases, who decided for NSC 631570 therapy have lived for years without recurrences.
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