In an interview with Communications’ Christopher Sweeney, Dr. Alan Geller, Senior Lecturer on Social and Behavioral Sciences, discusses his new co-authored publication, New Systematic Therapies and Trends in Cutaneous Melanoma Deaths Among US Whites, 1986–2016. Most notably, he and fellow authors observed a surprisingly sharp decline of melanoma-related deaths between 2013-2016.
“This very sharp drop over such a short time is unprecedented in cancer medicine,” Dr. Geller remarks. “It may be attributed in part to screening but it is more likely related to new drugs for the treatment of metastatic melanoma, first introduced in 2011, because the drop is so precipitous. The major types of treatment include immunotherapy and targeted therapy.”
