The CancerWeb Report, What's New In Cancer: December, 1996
Malignant Melanoma

• Adult eye cancer, different trends in the US and UK - Melanomas are the most common eye cancers in adults, in contrast to children who develop retinoblastomas and rhabdomyosarcomas. A report in the November, 1996 issue of the British Journal of Cancer by researchers at the Institute of Ophthalmology in London, described differing trends in the mortality from eye cancers in Britain and the UK. In the US, age-standardized mortality rates for men and women aged over 40 have fallen from 0.49 and 0.41 per 100,000 in 1955-59 to 0.22 and 0.17 per 100,000, respectively, in 1985-89. This 55-59% reduction was accompanied by a 25-28% drop in the age-standardized incidence rates, which have declined from 1.98 and 1.33 per 100,000, respectively, in 1973-74, to 1.49 and 0.98 per 100,000 in 1985-89. In contrast, both incidence and mortality rates in England and Wales have remained similar to the 1955-59 US rates. They just fluctuated over the time period at 0.42-0.64 and 0.83-1.40 per 100,000 for mortality and incidence, respectively, showing no downward trend, with the exception of a slight fall in female mortality in the most recent 5-year period studied and which has continued in 1990-92. There is no explanation for the 2.7-fold difference in 1985-89 mortality. (Foss, Br J Cancer 74:1687, 1996)

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• New gene that suppresses metastasis identified in melanoma cells - Researchers at Pennsylvania State University, the University of North Carolina and the National Center for Human Genome Research have identified a gene with the benign name of KiSS-1, that is active or expressed only in melanoma cells that lack the potential to metastasize. Describing their results in the December 4, 1996 issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, these scientists showed that the gene could be transferred to metastatic human melanoma cells which then lost the ability to metastasize. This work is currently being carried out only in cell lines and in mice growing human cancer cells, and much more work is needed before any practical application emerges. However, it does promise at the very least to be a good marker for prognosis. (Lee, J Natl Cancer Inst 88:1731, 1996)