August 2013

A brief update on the GVAX trial – and what’s next?

Dr. Lipson told us today that the final subject in the Phase 1 GVAX melanoma vaccine trial that Robert went through at Johns Hopkins was enrolled two weeks ago. Around the end of the year or early in 2014, the researchers will have all the data from the study and will begin to write a report that they hope will be published in the middle of next year.

Don’t worry! Be happy!

But that’s hard to do, coming up on scans and a visit with Robert’s oncologist in two weeks. I’ve written before about scanxiety, so I won’t repeat that here – nothing has changed, and from reading posts by others on the Melanoma Patients Information Page sponsored by the Melanoma Research Foundation, we are far from alone in this.

This month, though, we had another reason to be anxious. Robert’s dermatologist last week removed a “freckle” from the back of his leg that I’ve been eyeing for more than six months. He did a shave biopsy of it, and today the results came back: it was a benign keratosis. Whew!