News archive

In recent years, the treatment landscape for solid tumors has undergone a notable change. With new cancer treatments, the future looks brighter for many young cancer patients, making fertility issues and future family planning an important aspect. Six specialists in oncology and onco-fertility at the Department of Oncology-Pathology join forces to compile knowledge and recommendations on this important issue.

A team of researchers at Karolinska Institutet and Yale School of Medicine wanted to know what happens to mosaic skin upon injury. Do simple wounds or surgery enhance the skin cancer risk by expanding mutated cells even more as generally believed? The surprising answer is no, according to newly published study in Nature.

Our skin contains specialised long-lived killer cells that protect against intruders. Researchers at Karolinska Institutet and the University of Copenhagen have now identified how these cells are formed, and shown that high levels of memory killer cells in cancer tissue correlate with a better survival rate in people with melanoma. The study is published in the journal Immunity.

A comprehensive comparison of cancer survival between the Nordic countries shows improvements for all countries over time with previously observed differences attenuated. The reasons for these improvements are likely multifactorial. Previous studies comparing cancer survival between the Nordic countries have found marked differences, with a notably poorer survival in Danish patients.

A new type of immunotherapy for the skin cancer malignant melanoma shows promising results. Three severely ill patients are now long-term survivors. The study, published in OncoImmunology, is the result of a collaboration between researchers at Karolinska Institutet and Karolinska University Hospital.

The risk of developing more than one skin melanoma over a ten-year period has seen a ten-fold increase in Sweden since the 1960s, a new study by researchers at Karolinska Institutet and Lund University published in The Journal of the National Cancer Institute reports. The researchers suspect that the increase is due to a change in holiday customs with more active sunbathing and overseas trips to southern climes.

Individuals with an inherited form of skin cancer often have a poor prognosis. The type of immunotherapy that was awarded this year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine is, however, particularly effective in this patient group, research from Karolinska Institutet in Sweden shows. The study is published in the Journal of Medical Genetics.

People with malignant melanoma with an inherited mutation in a certain gene are twice as likely to die of the disease, according to a new study carried out by researchers at Karolinska Institutet and Lund University in Sweden. The finding, which is published in The Journal of the National Cancer Institute, suggests that individuals with familial melanoma who have the mutation should be monitored particularly closely.